


A sort of homecoming

by AmyWilldo



Category: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-02-19 23:32:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 55
Words: 75,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13134483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyWilldo/pseuds/AmyWilldo
Summary: A loose retelling of Much Ado about Nothing, set in Queensland over World War 1, if you squint a little. Liberties have been taken. Australianisms have been added. No regrets.





	1. November, 1900, summer in the Darling Downs

She’s in a tree in the orchard, surveying the seas of gold, the wheat fields that surround the Baumgartners’, heat haze rising about her, and the buzz of wasps down in the grape vines, and pretending she’s a pirate and that she’ll steal it all, fight off the forces of evil who stand in her way, who’ve taken her father, when she’s called. Frau Baumgartner wants her, Gwen says, and why is she in the tree anyway? Girls aren’t allowed. Wilhelm, down in the garden tending the raspberry canes shakes his head, but Bridgid can see the smile he’s hiding well enough. He showed her where the first climb was after the easy branch. The elder Baumgartner boy is her preferred version of a brother, if she’d had to have one. He’s tall, and strong and useful, and he laughs at her jokes, without trying to make funnier ones, and he’s taught her everything he knows about cricket. She doesn’t have any brothers, or sisters neither, and she doesn’t need any of them anyway.  
She climbs down quickly enough, though, and the apple tree bounces back relieved of her weight. The bark’s smooth under her fingers and easier than the pine around her uncle’s, no splinters, and no annoying little spiders. She’s quick because Frau isn’t given overly to patience. Gwen’s four and a better girl, more patient than Bridgid can ever hope to be. She has hair in neat blonde plaits, and a white pinafore, and the white has no stains, even though she’s been helping in the kitchen and she follows rules, all of them and thinks that everyone else should too. Bridgid doesn’t. She has scruffy brown hair in a bob, because her aunt lost patience with all her rats nests, and she has on a brown dress, no pinafore because she couldn’t find it when she left home, and she sees no point in following rules unless they are things she wants to do anyway.   
The kitchen’s warmer than outside, dark like a cave, with plates on the dresser, and neat pictures hung on the wall, and a large wooden table, and a tall woman with a wooden spoon, surveying her domain, which includes the other Baumgartner boy who is currently pulling a face at her from behind his mother’s back. There’s no sights to see here, and piratical visions evaporate with the sour smell of baking, and Bridgid would rather be anywhere in the world else than inside today. Especially the way Frau Baumgartner’s surveying her now, Gwen having scuttled past and resumed her place at the table with her dough. She’s aware, suddenly, that there are leaves in her hair, and her hands are sticky with grape juice, stolen and sweet. She wipes them on the back of her dress, and Frau winces, and breathes in.  
“You were meant to be in the kitchen half an hour ago. I do not have all day for you, young girl, I have other things to do. I should have said no to your aunt, but she needs rest from your exploits. And here you were in a tree, and you are not in your pinafore, and your hair is everywhere. If you were my daughter, I would put you across my knee and the wooden spoon would be upon you.” Frau Baumgartner’s face is stern, and her apron is floured.  
“If I was your daughter,” Bridgid says, hands on hip, surveying the kitchen in imitation of Frau, Gwen wide eyed, Ben in the corner smirking, “I would break it.”  
Then she’s marched to the corner of the table with Ben, with Frau’s fingers around her elbow, and deposited on the stool next to him. He pokes her in the ribs, hard. “It’s a nice spoon. Good and thick and I should know, she uses it on me often enough. She’s a strong woman. I’d think again about talking back. If I were you, I’d be quaking in my shoes. But you are, sure enough. Oh, you poor poor little girl. Take a seat by me. I’ll take care of you. I like climbing trees more than making bread. I’m almost done anyway.”  
“Frau,” says Bridgid, without looking at him, placing a hand on the table, a fistful of flour white against the dark wood. “Ben’s dough looks terrible, don’t you think? He’ll need to do better than that to be able to look after himself if he ever grows up. If I were his sister I’d feel sorry for him. Besides, he can’t climb as high as me anyway.”  
Gwen lets out a squeak and almost drops her dough on the floor, catching it in her pinafore. Ben elbows her again in the ribs, the same spot, and it hurts. She punches him in the upper arm, hard. He throws a handful of flour at her lap. Gwen claps her hands over her mouth, and her dough is squashed into her apron, and she starts to cry, little tear streaks forming in the flour dust on her face.   
Frau quirks an eyebrow at Gwen, who gulps her tears silent and starts to pull the dough out of the apron, webs of dough strands knotted together. Frau frowns at the two children in the corner, catching Bridgid trying to push Ben off his stool. “You know, Ben, your brother knows how to bake bread. That’s why he is in the garden and you are in here. Do you want to fall behind? You may leave once your dough is ready to prove. You, Bridgid, you are here because you need to know these things. It is your duty. When your fathers return back from the war, do you not want them to be proud of you? I doubt that they have bread to eat, no, nor yet a bed to sleep in, and here you are, the two of you putting your fathers to shame, arguing about who can climb the tallest tree. Do your duty and make the bread. If not for your father, then for yourself, for any independent grown woman must know how to provide for herself. Benjamin, you also, as Bridgid says, do your duty and make your bread, like your brother has learnt before you.”  
Ben glares at Bridgid, his best steely stare, modelled on his mother. Bridgid raises an eyebrow at him. “Your brother’s always going to beat you, you know.”  
“Huh. Like I care about anything you say. You can’t make bread either. You don’t even have a brother.” Ben passes her a bowl, full of flour, and nods at the starter in the middle, and the pitcher of water. “You’re not even a girl. My mother says girls don’t climb trees. You do. So that means you’re not a girl.”  
“No. I’m not just a girl. I’m Bridgid. I do what I want. And your mother probably climbed trees when she was a girl. And you’re just afraid to go as high as I do. Does that mean you’re not a boy?”  
Frau Baumgartner hides her smile, turning to check the stove, nice and hot and red embers glowing, her morning bake already safe inside. She remembers the apple trees at home, and a day when she’d been caught, red apple in hand, juice down her front, in a country far from this, with mountains, and green trees year round, and punishment administered, but the theft had been worth it. She remembers, too, Franz and David, picking the fruit bare before they left, and Franz carefully stowing his dried apple rings away in his bag, and the sweetness of his last kiss, and his last letter, and the silence that has followed it, and carefully does not think anymore.   
Gwen lifts her dough for approval, and Frau pokes it, nods, and covers it with a teatowel. Shoos her out the door, and into the bright sunlight. Turns back to find Ben looking suspiciously quiet, and Bridgid looking aghast at her dress, unprotected by a pinafore, and absolutely white, courtesy of her son, and about to shout.   
“You will both be quiet now. The dough needs your attention. Have you forgotten what it is to be hungry? Do you remember the drought?”  
Bridgid looks at her hands. So does Ben, and, then at the lapful of flour he’s donated to Bridgid.   
“Knead the dough. Consider this. If Bridgid, you were a boy, you’d be a pair of mischief makers together, the two of you. Like your fathers before you. Sich gleichen wie ein Ei dem anderen. Try to be better friends.”  
They knead, in silence. For a little while. Bridgid likes Frau better than her own aunt. Although she talks sternly, she lets Bridgid eat the sweet dough and find out for herself that her stomach doesn’t like it, rather than simply declare it off limits, and shout when she tries it anyway. At home, she’s not allowed, Gwen neither. Her uncle is strict on the subject, and hence her aunt also. When her father comes back, they’re going to live in their own house again, and she will make him the bread, and she will cook and eat as many plum cakes as she ever can, and no one will tell her no, or spank her with the wooden spoon or the belt. Here, discipline is only with words, and she knows what she can and cannot do, and what will happen if she doesn’t. At home she doesn’t, and sometimes her uncle is strict, and her hand stings from the chiding, and sometimes he doesn’t notice her existence. She’s not his daughter, after all. Here, she can climb trees and eat apples, and play ball with Wilhelm, and fight with Ben and sometimes if Frau is feeling that they have been well behaved, which is not often, drink tea. Learning to knead dough and speak German is a small price to pay for freedom.  
“My bread’s going to rise higher than yours,” Ben whispers at her, as he covers off his bowl with a wet tea towel.   
“As if anyone cares. Who wants bread that’s all holely? I bet mine tastes better.” She sticks her tongue out at him, and covers hers off too. “You have to give me the red pencil if it does.”  
“Fine.”  
“Fine.”  
It’s the fourth time the red pencil changes hands, this week.


	2. 1905, February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bridgid's complaining, and Gwen's trying not to listen

“It’s not fair,” Bridgid says, repeating the morning’s complaint for the umpteenth time. “Charles is as thick as a boiled egg. A poddy calf. The proverbial block of wood. And he’s to go to a proper school, and learn Latin, and maths, and history, and all of the things, and all I have to learn from is your mother, and Frau Baumgartner and that bumbling twit of a school teacher who came in on the last train and almost missed his stop. How do you miss the only stop for miles around on a plain as flat as this, when you can see it coming?”  
“I don’t mind,” says Gwen. “We’ve not the money,” she nudges her cousin, “and I’ve no desire to be lectured in a stuffy classroom. If I had the time, I’d want to play anyway.”  
Bridgid throws her shoe across the room, and there’s a smudge left on the yellow striped wallpaper, which Gwen knows she’ll have to wipe down later, or endure a lecture from her father about slovenly behaviour, and then an inevitable further lecture at them both about talking back, and ingratitude. The shoe disappears behind the wardrobe, into the place where the dust rabbits live.  
“But if we had the money? I’d want to learn more than I can from the fools who pretend that they’re teachers when they come out here, when really they’re tricksters and drunkards in disguise, and no better than they ought to be. That last who was flirting with Susie and she’s only twelve. The nerve of the man. Imagine learning from a real teacher! There’s only a wee taste of it here in this book,” gesturing at the second hand history of the world, chapter 2, that the last teacher left behind in his haste to move on, “and it’s like waking up from a dream before it’s finished. I need to know how it all fits together, if I’m to run my dad’s farm, and you know that’s what I want above anything. Anything. You, though, wouldn’t you want to go away to school if you could, to be somewhere else? I know you want to see all the places you’ve dreamed over out of the books. At least Brisbane? If we had the money, wouldn’t you rather be the one to be in Brisbane and see the sights? You’d appreciate it a damn sight better than Charles, I know you would. You could take a ship down to Sydney, if we had the money.”  
Gwen looks thoughtfully out of the window of their shared room, out into the night sky, thick with clouds, missing the stars. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t really need to. There’s no money to send her, or her cousin away to school, as romantic as it sounds in the books, an adventure with a dorm full of girls her own age, rather than the three in the region that there is, and midnight feasts, and pranks and fun in class. She’d have a proper friend of her own, rather than a cousin who always manages to pull her into trouble, a friend who’d plait hair, and play games that don’t involve climbing trees, and fighting, and who doesn’t complain all the time. She imagines that Charles will have a whale of a time, but there’s no point in envying something she’ll never be able to have. There’s been a good harvest the last couple of years, but before that, the drought. There’s no money saved. There’s so many other things that she’s heard her father talk of to her mother that need money first, a traction engine that the Smiths have bought, hundreds and hundreds of pounds, the shed that needs rebuilding, the fencing that’s always falling down, and of course, the lease payments to keep up, on both farms, or they’d lose them both, first Bridgid’s father’s, and then hers. Bridgid listens at the door for those conversations, and is fearfully cross and sad afterwards, and won’t come inside for hours afterwards, and supper afterwards is silent.   
There’s a page, though, in the history book, an illustration of the rolling hills of France, green with grass, with perfect rustic farmhouses that are much more authentic then their weatherboard house, surrounded by a square of pine trees for shelter, not visible from anywhere, flocked out by fields of sorghum, brown and crusty and not scenic at all. She likes it better when they plant out the sunflowers, when her dad deems the price to be better, and she can imagine herself to be in a Van Gogh painting. They went to the Bunya Mountains once, when she was five. The Bunyas look nothing like the picture, they’re craggy and rough, and dense, not soft and rolling like a blanket. It would be nice, one day, to see France. It looks peaceful. Green. Perhaps, if she’s lucky, one day she’ll see it. If her parents ever have money to spare, or if she marries someone rich. It’s not something she imagines actually happening. Still. It doesn’t hurt much to dream. If she’s patient, and works hard, she’ll at least visit Brisbane when she’s eighteen, her mother’s promised. She’ll see the art gallery then. It’s ten years away, though.  
“Frau can teach you French as well as German. She must know it. They’re right next to each other, aren’t they?”  
Bridgid looks exasperated at her cousin in the dark bedroom. “Yes, of course they are. You’re proving my point. You want to learn these things. I need to learn these things. Charles is being taught these things and it’s pearls before swine. Charles is Charles. It’s not relevant whether or not he wants to learn, it’s more a question of his innate inability to do so.”  
“You’ve been reading the dictionary again, haven’t you?”  
Bridgid turns over, and mutters into her pillow. “Exactly my point. I want to learn. I need to know how to run my own farm. It’s just as important for me as it is for Charles.”  
Gwen turns over and pretends not to hear. Feels the ribbon edge of the pillowcase, worn but still smooth to the touch, and soothing against Bridgid’s complaints.  
“Except that learning from Frau means sitting in the same room as Ben. He’s so annoying. All the time. Last time I was in trouble and had the cane, you know it was his fault. He’d pulled the face first, and blown the raspberry that made her turn about. As if I care whether he can milk a cow faster than me. I can’t imagine the cow’s terribly impressed. And I can shoot just as well as he, any day. If I was allowed, I mean and don’t tell Uncle, oh god, you’re going to tell him aren’t you. Great. Please don’t. Ben’s lying about being able to hit a target on horseback. Not even my father could do that. Probably. Even Wilhelm has to stop and take aim. Wilhelm’s told him that. Then he stomped off to the verandah and started up with the knife throwing again. I bet he missed all the things he was trying to hit. Pfth. Who cares about him, anyway?”  
“What I care about right now is sleep. I bet you’ll feel better if you have one? Stop talking and go to sleep, Bridgid.” Gwen turns over again, huddling the crocheted bedspread in, to husband the heat. Counts the knots over with her fingers, until she can only dimly hear her cousin, still complaining.  
“He should save his stories for Lyndall, she certainly cares enough to hear them. Do go on, Benjamin. Tell me more, Benjamin. Perhaps she’d come to her senses if he pulled all the faces at her that he does at me. No, she’d probably just love the attention. Goodness knows why. Do you know, he said, that if he were I, he’d be ashamed about how slowly I knit. A thousand socks a day, he said he could do. What a filthy liar. He snarled the wool so badly last time he was here that we had to cut it out. Do you remember the dressing down we had from Aunt, about waste? I hope the knot rubs his ankles to bits, when he wears them. Were I him, I’d ashamed of how little maths I knew. I’ve shown him how to deduce the probabilities when breeding the cows, and Jack’s shown him using cards, and taken his money, and -”  
“Bridgid. I do not care. I need to sleep. You spend just as much time boasting as does he. Do I need to remind you? Or may I sleep now? I just want to be happy and you’re in the way of me and the sandman. May I sleep? Please?”  
“Sleep then. It’s not fair, is my point. Why am I stuck here, with my uncle, and Ben, and all, when there’s a whole world of information out there? Charles won’t be. Why should I?”  
Gwen sleepily confides to her pillow that Bridgid may have a point. She dreams of a world outside the farmlands, where there’s music and laughing and people paint to express themselves, not to protect the wood from rot and decay, where she doesn’t have to be good, where she doesn’t have to be the one listening to other people’s stories, where she can just be.


	3. 1910

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benjamin isn't convinced that growing up is worth it.

Ben’s collar is scratching him. His coat, his father’s second best, fished out from the back of the dusty cupoard, is hopelessly too large and hangs off him like it did on the coathanger in the closet, slumping down his shoulders, and the long trousers have had to be rolled up several times, both at the waist, and at the cuff. He looks a bit of a stuffed guy. Not so his brother, at nineteen Wilhelm looks every inch an adult in his father’s best coat, with the one bowtie they have between them tied neatly around his neck, waltzing around the dance floor of the Big House with Margaret in his arms. There’s the McGregor boys, Stuart with Susie from the railway, and Percy with a girl from the town over the river that Ben doesn’t recognise, and looking like they’re ready to take on the world, and the Stuarts, Stephen whirling his best around and trying not to stand on Henrietta from the hardware shop’s toes, and mostly not succeeding, but at least he’s trying. Here he is, instead, looking like a scarecrow standing by the wall, pretending to examine the wallpaper. The wallpaper’s not even that interesting, blue stripes and a flower pattern, like some English castle, plonked down haphazardly in the middle of the Downs, and two years shouldn’t make such a difference. He’ll never catch up to his brother. It’s like there’s a threshold into a room, and Wilhelm’s in there and the door is shut. Doesn’t mean he can’t try. Should mean that it’s easier because Wilhelm’s inside, and he’s not the first Baumgartner boy on the dancefloor. It’s him, he knows, that’s holding back.  
Tonight, the adults know what they’re doing, or at least enough to not take each other out, and it’s about keeping up, and fitting in, and he doesn’t have a wide range to compare tonight against. It’s only been the last year that they’ve been allowed to stay up, Ben, and Jack and Bridgid, and this is Gwen’s first.   
Charles, next to him ‘on break’, is in his perfectly tailored suit, made just for him, with his perfectly clean hands, and his perfectly framed smile, is his friend, he reminds himself, as his mother has reminded him over the last week, and one should attend one’s friend’s parties. Charles’ friends, also visiting ‘on break’ from their exclusive Brisbane boarding school, must be made welcome, whether or not his collar scratches and his suit is a ridiculous joke. At least there’s Jack on his other side, Charles’ handmedown last season suit equally as constrictive, and equally as unimpressed. Though that’s probably more down to the fact that his half brother is a fool, rather than envying his advantages.   
The room’s full of adults in their best Sunday clothes, and the music’s thrumming with energy, and the older folk are nattering up against the striped wallpaper, and pushed out furniture, and the oil lamps are glowing off the walls, and it’s better than any fancy ballroom by a long shot, whether it belongs here or not. Jock’s asleep in a corner chair already, and when Stephen passes him, with two cups balanced in one hand, he ruffles his little brother Angus’s hair, protective, and Ben remembers the days when that was him, and Wilhelm, like it was a million years ago. Now, he’s less keen to be the one on the dancefloor. It’d be miles easier to stay sat in that chair, dozing to the music, rather than spread his wings and ask a girl to dance. Run the risk of tripping on his own feet, or treading on hers, and being called a fool.   
To his left, Charles and his fellows are watching the older folk, and passing comparisons on the dresses, with those in the city, and Hugh’s blonde older sister, who came to visit at half term, showing off her new engagement ring, and who’s prettier by far, by far, Richard says, than any of the girls in the room. That no one in the room compares, and besides all the ones worth dancing yet, are already dancing with the fellows out of school, and why bother?   
Gwen’s staring out the window of the Big House, watching the sunset, lost in a daydream, completely unaware of her surroundings. Bridgid’s watching the swirling couples, the dresses flicking, the black suits punctuating the hall, tapping her toes, fingers tight in the fabric of her dress, surely a handmedown from her aunt, light blue and high neckline and low hemline and surely dying to dance. Tonight she’s not meeting his eyes, not that he’s winking now, for her uncle and aunt stand by the wall, by Gwen, holding a cup of tea as if it will leap from their hands, and monitoring all the goings on. Not that there’s any goings on, yet, to monitor.   
Bridgid’s made a fuss every dancing lesson, but not begged off a single dance in any of them, no matter how inept the partner, and how bad the music, he recalls. It’ll be the work of a minute to torture her with one of the city slickers that she’ll no doubt despise. If she’s quick enough to tell him he’s a fool, she’ll be faster still to bite them down.   
“Come on, lads,” Ben beckons. “There’s girls yet to dance with, look. Try your luck. Bridgid’s a fine dancer, you fellows. Fast on her feet, you’ll need to watch yourselves.”  
“Go on, Hughie,” Charles beckons. “I’ll take Gwen if you’ll take Bridgid. Night’s young, and so are we. Richo, there’s a blondie for you by the window.”  
Ben watches them go, all swagger and bluster in their unblemished creases, and Jack take the opposite path, aiming for Ursula by the door. Lyndall shoots him a look, and he chooses not to meet her eyes, with a wave of relief as she sweeps into the dance on Richard’s arm, and doesn’t look back. Watches Gwen put her hand daintily into Charles’ and be spun into formation, one with the couples on the floor, part of the pattern. He watches Bridgid startle, as Hughie speaks, and in his head he can hear the words that are masked with the music, all city boy polite, and may I have the pleasure of this dance, and she looks over at him, back against the wall still, all suspicion, and he meets her look with a smile that professes innocence. Jack’s out there now with Ursula, and Lyndall’s out there now with brother Stephen trampling her toes, and being less polite about it than Henrietta was, and Wilhelm’s still circling Margaret’s waist, and when he looks back, Bridgid’s gone.  
The blue dress has taken her in to the throng of adults, sandwiched with Hugh’s blue shirt, and he sees them weave in and out, like a ribbon, like the fiddle, and by gee, she’s quick on her feet, even if she’s swifter with her tongue to bite like a snake. She hates him, and he hates her. He’s kissed every girl in the school bar her, in one game or another, and she’s kissed every boy in the school bar him, and when he caught her in one of the games, she kicked him in the shins and slipped free even before he’d thought about whether he wanted to try to kiss her or not. She doesn’t look at him at all, and her hair’s flying about her shoulders when she moves, and there’s Hugh with his hand on his back, splayed fingers, and upright spine, just like the teacher tells them, and she’s smiling, not snapping, and no one’s nursing a sore shin, so it must be going well. She’s smiling and he can’t tell if it’s a polite smile or a real one, and she’s not looking at him at all, not even with the raised eyebrow that she gives his face pulling efforts, or the narrowed eyes of I’ll reduce you to a pile of rubble that she gets when she’s competitive in class, or the smirk that she gives him when she wins. She’s not looking at him at all.  
When the dance ends, he’s surprised to find himself peeling off the wall, and shouldering his way in, passing Charles and Gwen, and Richie and Lyndall, and tapping Hughie on his immaculate shirt shoulder, takes Bridgid on himself, and he can’t tell if she’s happier to be with him or not, because she’s looking over his shoulder, as she normally does, when they’ve been made to practice together, and her hand’s on his shoulder as it normally is, even though tonight’s not normal at all. Tonight’s different from practice though, because in practice, you can laugh at Lyndall’s hem slipping down, and Jock’s braces losing their elastic at the wrong time, and Stephen promenading Ursula straight into a wall, and the time he and Bridgid headbutted each other and had to sit out the rest of the lesson, goose egg lumps on their forehead. In practice, all the boys serve their turn at turning all the girls around the room, and the girls all roll their eyes at each other, and he doesn’t care if Jack, or Stephen, or anyone else in the world dances with Bridgid, it’s a relief, not to have to listen to all the things she has to criticise him about and come up with more clever things on the spot to shoot her down, and still keep the steps in line, or risk the teacher’s cane. Tonight’s different, he thinks. Tonight, they’re just two people dancing, and they’ll be civil because they’re at a proper dance, he tells himself, and that’s the right thing to do, and Wilhelm’ll be disappointed if he does anything untoward. He can dance with her like she’s any of the other girls twirling about the room, surely. He’s successful in pretending that this is the case, until she starts talking.   
“You put those city slickers onto me, did you? My feet are bruised raw. I thought they were taught how to dance in the big smoke. My feet are raw, Benjamin, raw. If I were you, I’d be ashamed of myself, making a poor girl stand up with clumsy oxen like that.” Ben laughs, and it’s back to normal, and his hands aren’t sweating like he thought they were. It’s just Bridgid, after all. He’s danced with her a million times. This is just one more time.   
“It’s for your own good. Bet your uncle’ll be pleased, look at Bridgid, he’ll say, dancing with the rich boys. Give that a couple of years, and we’ll see where that goes. If I were you, I should be grateful. Thank you, Benjamin, I’d be saying, for giving me this wonderful opportunity to court a fine gentleman. Come on, old girl, you can say it. Thank you, Benjamin.”  
Then she accidentally on purpose stands on his foot, and Ben stumbles.  
“I’m fifteen, and I’m not interested in meeting toffs who’re no better than they ought to be. I don’t care whether my uncle’s pleased or not. I don’t care if you’re pleased or not. Go dance with Lyndall if you want to be pleased. I’m dancing. If you want to talk, go dance with your mother and tell her your theories. If you’re dancing, let’s dance. An apple says you can’t make it through the rest of this dance without stepping on my feet. An apple.”  
Ben thinks about saying something further but can’t think of anything that’s sufficiently clever to reclaim his advantage. Sees his brother nod his head approvingly across the room, Margaret securely held in his arms, and adjusts his own grip, and goes back to pretending they’re on friendly relations, as best he can. She’s warm through the dress, as, he expects is he, and there’s no clumsy wrongfooting with her, the lightest of presses and she moves featherlight to position, like a well trained horse, and there’s something terribly right about this whirling on a pin point he’s doing, with a lass who hates him, but dances as if she’s part of the movement he’s created and the pattern is matching his heartbeat, and the flush on his cheeks and it’s so joyful he can’t bear it, he laughs again, and he shouldn’t laugh, because in that gap of inattentiveness, Hughie’s back to tap on his shoulder, and he’s lost her.   
Back on the wall, on the outside looking in, as is Jack, he sees through the crowd, on the other. They nod at each other across the room, half smiling through the throng, until Ben catches old man Smith looking at Jack and shake his head, and look back at Charles in the dance, evidently comparing the two and as always, finding Jack falling short, and Jack’s smile, catching the direction of Ben’s gaze, is lost.   
Later that night, having danced with Lyndall, and Ursula, and Susie, and Margaret, and his mother, and everyone else but Bridgid, because he’s not game to lose to her, not any more this week at least, as he’s fetching his mother hot black tea, and sipping his own lemon barley water, he hears a slap like the slamming of a door, in a gap in the music. He leaves his mother to her conversation with Mrs MacGregor, and traverses the throng, only losing a fraction of his water, collecting Jack, bored in a chair near the door with a nod of his head, at which he eagerly leaps to his feet. It’s that time of night when he’s noticed that the adults get silly, and he knows he’s tired enough, his feet are telling him the story. If it weren’t for Margaret and Wilhelm still dancing, they’d be on the road.  
Stifling a yawn, he pushes open the courtyard door, into the cool dark and the smell of the white night flowers vined up the poles, sweet and light against the spilled tea and sweat of the hall. The white bird bath shimmers in the moonlight, and the courtyard feels the way he’s imagined the secret inside places of a palace, but in his daydreams, to go with the sweet fragrance of the white flowers, there’s beautiful maidens, some of whom may bear a passing resemblance to young ladies of his acquaintance, and plates of delicacies, and possibly even songbird. There’s not usually a Charles, looking somewhat guilty with an uncomfortable Gwen in the circle of his arms, against all the rules, and Richard with a red cheek standing an arms’ length from Bridgid, defiant with her hands on her hips poised to do it again. Hughie’s nowhere to be seen, but that’s to be expected when you take every second drink from a hip flask and it’s not water you’re drinking.   
The doorframe’s cool against his heated back, and Jack lounges up against it, to watch the show unfold, just in case he’s needed. Ben steps into the gap.  
“Told you to watch yourselves. Did I need to spell it out for you? She broke my arm once, you know.”  
Bridgid extracts herself further, blue dress swirling, picked out in moonlight in the centre of the courtyard, backed up safely against the white concrete birdbath. “I did no such thing. If you choose to put yourself in a risky situation, you need to be prepared for the consequences. If you choose to climb further than a monkey would, and further than me, then it’s not my fault if you fall out merely because I shook the branches a little. Not my fault, you didn’t have to take the dare, it was your choice, Baumgartner. Besides, your arm didn’t break. It was a grass fracture, your mother said.”  
“Greenstick,” Gwen volunteers, having extricated herself also, looping her her arm about Bridgid’s.   
“Besides, you made me fall off my horse with your stupid snake, and I helped you catch up with your school work, so I’d think we’re even. If I were you, I’d call that a draw. On that instance anyway.”   
“If we’re counting from today, then you owe me an apple,” he comments, as she sweeps by, treading on his Sunday best shoes as she goes, and she looks up at him in confusion, as she flounces her blue skirt, and sweet smelling hair past, and the curves of her too, which he really shouldn’t be noticing, far less daydreaming about, and through the door, and presumably off away to fetch her aunt and uncle home, sweeping Gwen in her wake. The music from the fiddles, and the clicking of feet on the wooden floorboard drift out, as the door swings in the breeze.  
“Ben, Ben, Benjamin Ben,” Charles sighs. “Stop that stupid smile. I don’t know that I can forgive you for that. I was about to kiss Gwen.”  
Ben shakes his head, and examines Richard’s cheek, solicitously taking Richard’s jaw in his hand, turning his face from side to side. Perhaps a little rougher than he would have done, had it been Wilhelm. “Did you succeed with my fair Bridgid, then?”   
Richard shakes his head out of Ben’s grip. “Country girls aren’t worth the trouble.”   
He’s not consciously aware of taking the swing, the feel of Richard’s jaw against his knuckles and the sting of it as it lands, but he’s well aware of Richard’s returning blow to his shoulder, and then it’s on for young and old, and he bloodies up Richard’s nose for him, and Richard shoves him back into a potplant or two, cracking firmly on the tiles, and the end of it all is his brother extricating him by his collar, and a scolding from his mother, and a sense of keen satisfaction that takes him to bed that night.  
The next weekend, they all ride out to the river for a swim, just the lads, no girls, with the fishing rods, Charles, and he, and Richo and Hughie, the McGregor boys and the Stuart lads, and at an arms’ length Jack, hovering about the conversation without contributing, not that there’s anything much they’re talking about, the day, and the cricket and the storm likely coming in, and which horse is the fastest, and who can shoot the furthest which is no contest of course if Jack’s about, and it’s as if nothing’s happened. The paddocks are stubbled with the remains of the crop, and there’s nothing urgent for which any of them are needed, no fencing to fix, no errands to ride out for, nothing. The horses, hobbled, chew grass contently. The dragonflies buzz about the river banks. The storm is in fact brewing up over the hills, but it’s hours off, and the crops are in, and the sky’s blue at the moment, and that’s what counts. There’s a slice the big house has put in for after tea. No one mentions girls, or dancing, or the city, and everyone catches a fish, and it’s a bonzer day.


	4. 1912, Darling Downs, autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridgid wants to grow up

The piano swoops and soars, and Bridgid is transfixed. She’s never heard anything like this before, not on her uncle’s wireless, and not on Frau Baumgartner’s scratchy turntable, it’s transcendent. She’s flying with the music, like an eagle, far up out of the manor house, above the rows of adults blocking the view of the pianist come in specially on the train with the new, and over the fields, and up beyond the clouds. She can see Jack’s closed his eyes, and there’s the hint of a tear at the corner of his eye and she wonders if he’s remembering her, his mother. Or if he, like her, has nothing. If he was taken from his mother too young to have any memories. If he even knew her at all.   
On the other side of Jack, there’s Charles, staring into the distance, bored and rubbing at the edge of the cushioned chair he’s sitting on. Gwen’s chair is pulled in close to his, his doing, but Gwen hadn’t objected, and she’s sitting with her hands politely folded in each other, straight back, shoulders back, as Frau and Aunt Imogen have drilled too many times, and it’s impossible to tell whether she’s listening or not. It’s the same pose that they’ve had to take in the school photo, the last week, girls in the front, hands in their laps, boys on the back, hands by your sides, and stop moving, Baumgartner, nobody needs to see the silly face you’re pulling, smile for the birdie and hold. And hold.   
She can’t be certain, but she’s betting that the McGregor boys are asleep, backs straight, but they haven’t moved in two pieces. Lyndall’s awake, and looking out the window, where there’s a fly buzzing against the pane, as her brothers doze on each other’s shoulders. Through the windows, tall and with exuberant use of glass, for what care the Smiths if the hall is hot during summer and cold during winter, if she looks, she can see the fields, almost ready for the swarming activity of harvest time. She’s glad school’s out. There’d been nothing left to learn from the latest pale faced fool of a teacher, and she’s signed up to correspondence courses, Frau Baumgartner’s doing and the Big House has paid for it, for whomever in the school passed the qualifier, and that was a small enough amount, just Ben, Jack and her, that they can do what ever they like. Study wise. It’s a sop, to keep them happy. Keep them on their respective farms, she suspects. Bodies are needful. Her uncle told her that there was no need, that she’d be a farmer’s wife and it would be wasteful. Frau charmed him into it, somehow. She’s just as stern with the adults, when she chooses to be, as when she deals with children. Bridgid’s more chores as a result, to weigh out the learning, more work in the field, and her back aches with it, and there’s less time than ever, but she feels like it’s her freedom she’s buying with it. Independence.  
Ben is behind Charles, and meets her eyes with a quirked eyebrow. She wonders if he feels it too, the aching inside as the piano moves its melody down the dark wood of the dining hall, the atonal dissonances resolving into pure joy, and she tries not to, but she can’t help but smile, it’s too much not to let some of it out. For once, for once in his miserable teasing life, he smiles back, a proper smile, not a smirk, not a mocking taunt of I know something that you don’t, not one of his best faces designed to make her scowl or crack up during class, or one of the ones where he gives absolutely nothing away and just stares, like they’re still kids and if she looks away she loses, but a proper smile, full and beaming, like they were actually friends. He’d called her a termagant, last time they’d studied together, and she’d hated that she’d had to look it up, to find the nature of the insult. She’d lost the bet, that day, answered a question wrong while she puzzled it out, and had to tell everyone she met that Ben was the smartest seventeen year old in the Darling Downs. Not that she cares. Not that she’s looking.  
The piano dies away into silence, with the resonance of the final chord filling the hall, and the silence hangs for a blissful moment that she wants to prolong forever, to hang in it, in that peace like a bath. It’s broken, shattered, and she startles in her seat when the audience claps. Phillip, as is his right as the man of the manor, gives a self congratulatory speech about how well the estate is doing to be able to pay for such a distinguished pianist to come all the way out to the bush, and surely this will be a day long remembered, and so on, and at the end, finally, remembers to thank the pianist himself.   
The pianist apologises for not being the whole orchestra that would be needed to play the Fantasia properly, and she finally learns that the composer’s name is William, Vaughan Williams, and she feels a kinship, for surely he’s Welsh, like her mother’s folk had been. Vaughan Williams would understand, she feels, this ache, every note of it. The need to burst out of her skin, to just take to the fields, mount one of the horses and ride for the horizon, rather than stand in the kitchen, or sit darning, or behind the plough.   
Her uncle’s told her she needs to think of the future. Of marriage. That the lease to her father’s farm will be given up, when she’s twenty one, if she has no husband, and can’t take it on. That he’ll keep on managing it for her until then, which is what he promised David when he left, but if she can’t take it on, it’ll be his to run. David would understand. She has no idea whether her father would or wouldn’t have understood, would have approved or not. The only thing she knows of him is his strong back, riding down the lane and into a sepia tinted photo that sits by her bedside, all in his boxy khaki, and stern face waiting for the camera to click. She can imagine his voice, has imagined, encouraging her on, climb higher, ride faster, but she has no real memory to know whether she’s imagining that which does not exist, or extrapolating from real. In her imagination, her father would be proud of his girl running his farm. That’s what she wants. That’s what she’s always wanted. That’s what she says to her uncle.  
He won’t listen when she points to Frau Baumgartner, says that she’s German, and that’s different, and has two strong sons, and that’s different too, and he couldn’t have his niece, his sixteen year old niece living by herself. When she’d reminded him that her birthday was next month, he’d said, no place for a girl on her own, a farm. Picked his papers back up, end of discussion.  
When he’d left the room, her aunt, with a fair lack of subtlety, or lack of care for her feelings, counted off the local lads available, omitting Wilhelm, of course, Wilhelm’s expected to ask for Margaret’s hand any day, that is, as soon as his mother and her mother reach an understanding. He’s almost twenty one. Charles is also omitted, as they all understand he has set his cap at Gwen. Her aunt doesn’t leave anyone else out, not the McGregor boys, not the Stuart lads, not Jack and in particular not Ben, no matter how she protests that there’s no way she’d ever. It’s expected. He’s the youngest son, and has no farm, and she’s a girl, with a farm bordering the Baumgartner’s, and Frau Baumgartner’s not the worst mother in law to have, and she and Ben spend entirely too much time together anyway, no matter that most of it is spent arguing, and do try to be practical, Bridgid, do.   
She doesn’t want to get married. The four walls that make up the bedroom she shares with Gwen have closed in, the last year, and the house that used to be her father’s has to be bigger. She acknowledges, begrudgingly, that it’s too much work for one person, and that it would be necessary to have a partner in the endeavour, or, if the money is sufficient, farmhands. She just doesn’t see that it has to be a husband. She doesn’t want to marry any of them. She doesn’t want to marry Ben.   
That afternoon, on the ride home to her uncle’s, she diverges, out to the west paddock, where her father’s house lies, and she’s aware that she has at least one follower, and who it is, but she spurs Jimmy horse on, up to a full gallop, reckless down the road, and makes him work for it. The fact that she knows his horse is faster, and that he beat her the last time they rode out, an impromptu race around the Baumgartner’s back fallow paddock curtailed by his brother shouting at them both for kicking up the dirt and risking wombat holes and potentially breaking a horse’s leg, just spurs her on, and she knows she has the advantage, and she doesn’t care about the dust, her dress is a problem for another day, and she only has an hour before sunset, which means twenty minutes at most at the house, her house, before she needs to leave. Time matters. The hat slips back, and off, and the ribbon holds it about her neck like a collar.  
The gate for the fence about the house is latched shut, and she dismounts smoothly. Leaves the saddle on, and leads Jimmy to water, and Ben’s not too long behind her, but quieter about it than her Jimmy horse, snorting into the trough. No one rides as lightly as he does. No one. No doubt he’ll be ready with an insult or too, once she’s caught her breath, or he his. She’ll bet him he can’t keep his mouth shut and see if that works. Once her heart stops racing from the ride.   
There’s paint peeling on the front wall about the door: that will need fixing. The fruit trees still live, but the flowerbeds are bare, and the vegetable patch is a morass of squash vines. It’s not a pretty sight, and undoubtedly a snake’s nest. She ignores that he’s swung off his horse. He can be here or not, it makes no difference to her.  
“You shouldn’t be here,” Ben says. “Your aunt will have a giddy fit. Anything could happen to you, your aunt would say. You could be bitten by a snake, were it not for their respect, their courtesy, for their own.”  
She ignores him, and walks the house around, inspecting the rear. The chicken coop’s caved in, as has the cow stall. She’d have to rebuild that, if she was ever to have chickens, or a cow. The barn’s still standing, and she doesn’t have time to check, but the silo looks intact.  
“Bridgid, we can’t stay. You can’t.”  
“I know what the time is. It’s no business of yours, Benjamin Baumgartner. Coming here to gloat over my misfortunes is not becoming to a gentleman, your mother’d say. So lassen wie es ist. If you can’t keep the insults down, you can leave. I’m serious. Just for one night, please, just stop. Or leave now. It’s a bet. Penalty is leaving. Got it?”  
She pauses, hand on the door, to check. Fifteen minutes left, she’d guess.  
The door sticks in the jamb. It’s warped slightly with the years, it was never hard wood, because her father’d not been wealthy either, and the paint on the pine has cracked and faded, and it’ll need to be planed. She wonders if her father’s tools are still in the barn. If she had time, she’d check.  
“We shouldn’t be here.” Ben says, but without conviction.  
“It’s my house. You shouldn’t be here.” Bridgid pushes the door, and it opens.  
The house smells of damp. There’s been rain this winter, and she can see where the roof hasn’t done its job properly, down around the chimney in the living room, and she prods the floor, and it doesn’t feel soft, hasn’t given way. The mantel is bare, but she knows that all the items of any value, the paintings she half remembers, the one ceramic pointless shepardess figurine her father gave her mother as a courting gift, are all stored at her uncle’s, just in case. The furniture, other than her bed, is still here though, draped in old sheets against the dust, shrouded. The kitchen’s ready to go, with a lamp still on the table, although it’s dry and empty when she picks it up. The table leg, when she pushes it, gives way with a creak, and the table cracks into a useless pile of wood on the floor. She’ll burn it come winter.  
Ben opens the back door, and there’s a wind that swirls through, makes the hair stand on the back of her neck.  
“There’s wood still in the woodpile,” he remarks. “He probably chopped that.”  
“Of course he chopped it,” snaps Bridgid, “Who else would have? I was a kid when he left. It’s wood, it’s not going to magically disappear.”  
Ben’s father stands in a frame on his mother’s mantelpiece, in a group photo with Bridgid’s, and the McGregor’s father, who came home when theirs didn’t. Hats, and khaki, and solemn faces. Bridgid has the same photo, but tries not to look at it. Fighting a war for the Empire, on the other side of the world, against the Boer, and you should be proud, her uncle says. It makes no sense to her, even after it’s been explained. It’s farmers fighting farmers, and her father hadn’t come back, and now she’s standing in a kitchen looking at a house that used to be her home and wondering how she’s going to keep it, and a stupid boy telling her that her father isn’t here anymore.  
Her bedroom is as small as she remembers it, smaller without her bed, somehow, with the walls taller than the room is wide. The paint’s faded and drear, and the rug on the floor is motheaten, and dissolves when she prods it with a toe. The cupboard’s empty, she knows, but she opens it anyway, and the spiders scuttle away, There’s nothing there.   
“Ten minutes,” Ben warns from the doorway.  
She pushes past and stands at the doorway to her parents’ room. The metal framed bed looks intact, but the white cotton crochet cover is surely moth fodder now too. There had been a framed picture of her mother there, when her father slept here, and it must be with her uncle now. The last of the winter sun shines on the bed, and it’s cold. There’s a packet of papers on the bedside table.   
This is where she’ll sleep, if she lives here. In this room, where her parents slept, under this winter sun. When she picks up the papers, she finds them addressed to her, and when she turns it over, the inscription says “David Jones, found in possessions”. She suddenly feels too heavy, too sad, too impossible to stay. She’s not going to cry in front of Ben. They must be letters that he’d written, the absent father, to her, the wayward daughter, when she was four, and five and six, and stopped when he was killed. She doesn’t even recognise the handwriting, when she opens it to see. Her own father.  
“I won’t even have a house, you know. When Wilhelm and Margaret marry, my mother and he will switch rooms, and we’ll all be one happy family under the same roof. Margaret and she have already discussed it all, and I can only imagine how that’s going to be. No, they’ve made it clear to me that they’ll need my room for the babies, so it’ll be Ben for the road, forging my own path. Here you are with this empty one.”  
She’s not going to snap. She is. “I have four years before my uncle gives up the lease on my behalf. Four years to find a husband. Because a woman couldn’t possibly have a house on her own. Run this farm. No. My aunt’s made it clear that I need to marry. Me! This is my house. Not his to give up, not hers to tell me to marry. I can’t go on ‘the road, forge my own path’ no matter how much I want to, because what kind of a woman does that? My savings are nothing, because the working of this farm’s been my uncle’s. All of it. So don’t cry to me Benjamin Baumgartner, because this house, what I’m looking at, is no more mine than anything else on this earth.”  
She pauses, draws in breath, and she can see Ben brace for another tirade, but what comes out is different.   
“If this was my house, though. If it was.” She turns and walks backward, back, retracing her steps. “I’d paint the kitchen sky blue. None of this monotonous decorous white,” she says, flicking off a patch of white paint away from next to the doorframe.   
“Needs money for that,” Ben remarks, from behind.  
She nods, and turns, stopping in the middle of the living room, the package tight in her hand. Ben makes a slow spin, noting the shrouded chairs, and in his head, replacing them with the dark brown turned wood of his mother’s chairs, which he’d wondered over as a boy, legs as turned and muscled as his own. They’d fit.  
“I’d want this yellow,” he says, “if this were my house. Bright as an egg yolk, if we’re being thoroughly outrageous. Bring the sunshine right in.”  
She looks at him, one eyebrow raised at his audacity, and contemplates telling him that it’ll never be his house, always hers, and who said he was entitled to an opinion, but in her head, she can picture it, and it’s right and in her head the room glows, brighter than the inside of an egg, and she nods, slowly.  
He turns back down the corridor, stopping at her childhood bedroom. “Twilight purple in the kids’ room,” he warms to his topic, “I can’t stand the wallpaper in mine. Patterns that leave a bruise on your retinas. I’d think twilight would be restful. I mean, for your kids. They’ll need a rest, with you as a mother.”  
She snorts, and turns away. “No more than any child would with you as a father, I should think.”  
There’s the one room left, and she walks back to it. Let the washhouse outside, and the privy be painted whatever colour, it’s not important. He’s not going to mention it, she realises, as she stands in silence, contemplating the wire framed bed, shadowed through the curtains, a mystery. “Light green,” she pronounces. “Silvery light, like new growth of the gums. But, there’s no point thinking about the ‘ifs’, is there?”  
He pulls the curtain aside, to see better, and there’s the dilapidated chicken run. “If you don’t want ‘ifs’, start with something a little more solid. Could fix that up and run chooks, sell the eggs down the rail into Brisbane. City folk love a good egg, Charles was saying. Fix up the vegetable patch, and make sauerkraut, pickles, sell that too. Once you have money, folk listen, Mutti says. She’s not wrong.” He turns back to face her, and his head is haloed in the sunset.   
“Hark at you with the advice. You should write for the papers. Dear Aunt Ben, you could be, solving all the folk’s problems who write in to you. I didn’t ask for your help, Ben. Not that it’s any business of yours, and you should be thinking on your own problems, for surely you have enough of them, being, well, you. Not that you should be telling her, but she’s right, of course, you’d think your mother’s right, but she is. I’m going to have to be nice to her, and beg the chicks, am I? She’s right. It’s not going to change Griff’s mind, though,” she muses out loud. It’s shaping into a beautiful night. There’s purple flowing up from the horizon, and beyond the hedge, if she cares to look, there’s yellow grass swaying in the wind. There’s no place she wants to be more than here. She hates that in the future she won’t be. This will be someone else’s house. Someone else’s scenery. Someone else’s life.  
“No, of course not. Plus,” he offers up, “the snakes are bound to get ’em without us here to keep an eye out. You’re right. Crook idea. Only a fool’d have a go. Best set your cap at a city slicker like Hughie or Richard, old girl. For love of the money. They’d probably need you to live in a big house in Brisbane. None of this dull scenery out here. Next time Charles comes out with his band of city slickers, I should leave you alone and let one of them kiss you, Richard wanted to kiss you, I recall.”   
She narrows her eyes at him. “Are you trying to be funny? Because you’re nowhere close. Hands like an octopus, and teeth like a slug. Hugh trod on my feet. Richard had bad breath. Now come out of my house, so I can slam the door behind us.”  
Ben obliges. Leans up against the wall as she slams the door, as planned, but it’s not as satisfying as she thought it would be. Not final enough. If she can’t have her home, she’d much rather burn it down than leave it for her uncle to give up. There’s no matches, and that’s a little too crazy. Slamming the door will have to do.  
“You know it’d be the smart thing to do, if that’s all you need to do to keep this. Be smart, Bridge.” Ben says, holding his hat brim in his hands, turning it about, still leaning up against the wall, and avoiding her eyes. “You still have five minutes.”  
She pauses. It’s true. There’s a sunset to watch, now and it’s as melancholic beautiful as the music was, purple shading out behind, and pink orange clouds glowing, and she could be all dramatic and tell him to mind his own business and ride off, but it’s a good sunset.   
The wood is cool on her back, and she’s almost cold where she’s sweated. Almost. Five minutes. She won’t look at him. “Smart in this instance would mean keeping your opinions to yourself. I don’t want to get married. I just want to live here. The one shouldn’t mean the other.”  
“Didn’t claim to be smart, did I? So you wouldn’t, you know, just marry someone, for this? For freedom? A local boy. Surely one of them must have kissed you with a bit of spirit. You’ve surely had ample opportunity to sample.” She looks at him, and he’s watching the purple bloom across the horizon, and he’s not meaning anything by it, he’s not actually offering to kill two birds with one stone and marry her so she can have her house back and he can have a place to live, like it’s the sensible thing to do and not the most ridiculous thing she’s ever thought, and so she doesn’t punch him. Besides, she’s sixteen, near seventeen, and seventeen year old girls don’t, if she’s to go by what her aunt says, punch seventeen year old boys. Even if they deserve it.  
She’s suddenly conscious of her lips, and how dry they are. The last time they’d played the game, nigh a month ago, Jock had indeed kissed her, and it hadn’t been bad. It hadn’t been particularly good. There’d been teeth clacking on her teeth, and his nose had bumped hers. When she’d pulled away awkwardly afterwards, Ben had been watching. Eyebrows raised, and the corner of his lip caught under his teeth. Then, in the next instant, he’d found Lyndall to kiss, and the subsequent performance he’d put on, dipping her down melodramatically, and Lyndall all giggles and fanning her face afterwards, had caused the teacher to ban the game. Lyndall had seemed quite appreciative. Unnecessarily appreciative, even. Him meeting her eyes afterwards, all through Mr Wilkins’ lecture about propriety, he’d been smug. Defiant, even. It was all perfectly ridiculous.   
She doesn’t actually want to kiss him. She’s not at all wondering whether he’d carry on like an amateur actor with the theatrics, if she sprung it on him now, or if he’d stop talking altogether with the shock of it. She’s not at all imagining the rub of her nose down his, and the way in which his lips would curl against hers, because of course he’d be smiling. When does he not? Then he’d mock the life out of her for it. Because of course he would. She hates that she knows all of this, and she’s still imagining what it would be like to bite down into the place where his shoulder meets his neck, that place just south of the collar. To wipe the smug smile off his face and unsettle him instead. He needs to stop talking, and he needs to stop talking now, before she does something stupid. Stupid smiles aside, she doesn’t even like him most of the time. He’s incredibly annoying. Who else would be arguing with her over the imaginary paint colour of a house that she’s not going to ever live in?   
“You think you’re being funny, but you’re really not. It’s none of your business, last time I checked, who I kiss and who I don’t. I’m not in love with any of the local boys.”  
“Love?” Ben blows his cheeks out. “That’s a challenge and a half, Bridge. Someone has to make you fall for them, for you to keep this?” Ben sweeps his hands across the sky like a magician, casting the last of the sunset down, “Let me know if anyone ever does, eh? Because I don’t think you want to give this up.”  
“It’s done. I did it. The next chance I have, I’m leaving. Brisbane and a governess and heaven help me for patience to deal with small children, maybe. Or perhaps I’ll be a trader. Or work in a shop. That is, unless my aunt makes me marry you, for being out alone after dark. I told you not to follow me, Baumgartner.”  
He pales, places a hand on his heart dramatically. “To the horses, then. Fate worse than death to be avoided!”  
“I am not a fate worse than death.”  
“That’s what they all say, Bridgid, that’s what they all say.”   
Jimmy horse snickers as she takes the bridle, nudging her hand, looking for an apple, a sugarcube, and she has nothing for him but a pat on his long nose, the package into the saddlebag, and he drops his head, disappointed, to the grass. She tugs him gently through the gate, waits for Ben and his chestnut mare. They mount up, as the last of the rays stretch across the sky.   
“You’d send any wife mad in a day, you would. It’s a good thing you don’t have to marry.”  
He snorts at that. “I’d have to marry someone who was round the bend already, that’s what you’re saying? Definitely a fate worse than death.”  
She looks across at him, silhouetted in the sunset. Tousled brown hair under the hat, Sunday best jacket and riding pants, and crooked nose, and blue eyes laughing at her. “I bet you get married before I do. Some foolish blonde girl who thinks you’re actually funny and whose father hands you a farm. Lyndall, for instance. You’ll serve each other right. I can see it now, you and your poor wife, each crazier than the other, in a farm full of weeds because you’ve pulled up the crop and six children because you’ve forgotten to stop having them, and the sheep grazing across your lands because you’ve not mended the fences, and not two cents to rub together between the two of you.”  
He crosses his arms, sitting in the saddle. “I’m not marrying Lyndall in a month of Sundays. No, it’s your wedding we’re speaking of, you’ll fall just like all the other girls, and you’ll be married to some fool or another, and this place will be yours again, despite your histrionics, and you’ll have your own fences to mend and six children to run after. There’ll be someone. You don’t scrub up that badly, old girl. As long as you, you know, keep your mouth shut.”  
She fixes her hat back on her head, and ties the ribbon tighter under her neck. The sun’s almost gone now, and the last rays make her brown hair shine red in the black, on her shoulder, and her white dress is glowing against the twilight purple.   
“I’ll not be marrying anyone who wants me to keep my mouth shut and you can keep your six children to yourself, Benjamin Baumgartner. Now, get your horse off my property if you want to keep it, and you’d best ride for home at full tilt if you don’t want to bear the brunt of your mother’s wooden spoon. Or end up with my aunt after you.” She tips the brim of her hat to him, and clicks to Jimmy horse, who starts at a canter up the lane, towards her uncle’s. Looking back, she can see him and the mare, ignoring her warning, walking more sedately down the drive. It’s a good house and it's not going to be hers.


	5. 1913, Darling Downs, August

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack doesn't want to settle for this

Jack both looks forward to, and doesn’t look forward to his half brother coming home. When it’s just Jack, he doesn’t feel like the after thought, the by-blow, his father rides out with him, and they check fences, they move the sheep, he’s taken around to talk to the buyers, into the bank, he’s part of the mechanics that makes the family work, he’s John Smith, my son. Call him Jack. What he doesn’t know about this place isn’t worth knowing.   
When Charles is there, he’s left behind, Jackie black boy to work the stables, and check the staff. He’s nothing, less than nothing, the mistake his father made, after Felicia died, that had his mother sent away, and no one thinks to ask how his mother felt about the matter, no, his mother doesn’t matter, and she’s sent back to her mob at the Bunyas, and no one talks about that, ever. He has nothing of hers, but one word, the word for sheep, and cloud, “jimbur”, and it’s not much.   
It’s something he tries not to think about, and generally isn’t made to think about, until Charles and the city folk come back for their yearly break, and this is the last time Charles will be leaving, and then he’ll be back full time, and Jack’s certain his father can’t wait. The city folk that visit with Charles are all of a kind, all white, all fair, and cricket obsessed, and unthinking. Remarks about the ‘half-caste’, and “Jackie black boy” and ‘how do you bear it’, asked of Charles, not of him, and he does his best not to hear them.   
Today, the last break before the last term, the leaving, is a picnic, a formal one, people in their church jackets, and tables rather than picnic rugs, and girls in their white dresses. Picnic baskets have been sent ahead by their cook, ginger beer cooling in the river, tied by their necks, in amongst the fish. In the afternoon, there will be races, but only for the few, not the many, for Charles and the city folk, of course, and the McGregors, and Ben, and the Stuarts, but his father’s asked him to sit it out. The city folk wouldn’t think it fair. Jack doesn’t ask him to explain what that means. Looking about the group, he can see too well how it’s going to be, this day.   
Billy is riding out to the flank, with Margaret riding side saddle beside him, pretending to be a proper lady, when Jack’s seen them slipping out onto the verandah at every dance, his hands around her face, and hers under his shirt. Still, he’ll keep their secret, because no-one’s being hurt by it, and that’s his test. His point of honour, if it is allowed that he has one.  
To the right are the McGregor and Stuart boys, each edging in front of the other, competitive in everything that they do, but he’s seen them after the race, the test, the competition ends, and whichever one loses, wins, it doesn’t matter. The time that they had the shooting contest, the one that Ben dared Bridgid to compete in, and Stu won, and Bridgid didn’t come last as Ben bet that she would, so he had to swim in the river in all his clothes and risk his mother’s wrath, Percy told everyone, for the rest of the month, what a decent shot his brother was, and Stu and he practised together, so Angus says, and the next month Percy beat him, and Stu told everyone what a great brother he had, so keen and willing to learn, and able, look at what he did in a month. They’re even stevens over all, Percy and Stu, and they don’t mind. It’s the fun of competing that they like. The Stuart boys move as a pack, and some days it’s only the height difference that gives away their age gaps, they’re all very similar in face, and attitude towards life, that it’s to be lived at full bore, and all at once, and they don’t compete amongst themselves, only with people outside the family, and they all look out for little Angus, although it drives Angus mad when they call him that, which makes them do it all the more. The McGregors generally beat the Stuarts, at shooting at any rate, and the Stuarts win in foot races, and the Baumgartners in saddle. He beats them all at shooting, and he can hold his own in the races on horse, but today he’s not going to do any of them, because his brother wouldn’t stand it. He would have liked to have been a brother like the McGregors, had a brother like the Stuarts, but he doesn’t have the words to say that to Charles, and doesn’t think, more to the point, that Charles would understand. Charles does not want, or need, a brother with skin that doesn’t match his.  
The adults make up the bulk of the group, and in there his father, but ahead is Charles, and Hugh, and Richard, all blond, and stiff upper back, and stiff upper lip, and much jovial laughter, and they match the blue sky of the day in their blue shirts, all matching, untouchable. The girls following on behind, Lyndall and Abigail Stuart, and Gwen, leaning over each other to tell secrets, but crisp and white and upright when they’re observed by the adults.   
Behind them all, playing sheepdog, Bridgid, and Ben. Jack wonders, sometimes, if Ben knows he’s doing what he’s doing, the hovering, the waiting to cap Bridgid’s cutting comment. That the bets aren’t really bets anymore, but egging each other on to an inevitable collision, and he’ not sure which of them will come off worse. For now, they’re playing nice, but earlier this morning, Bridgid spooked Ben’s horse, which takes some doing, with a well thrown clod of hay, and laughed, as Ben’s mare reared, and Ben held his seat, of course. Then Ben managed to spur Bridgid’s Jimmy horse into a canter, with a well placed whip, and then galloped after her, like they were kids still, the end result of which was that neither of them had to spend any time with any other of the throng. If Bridgid was a proper lady, she’d be riding up along side the blue shirt brigade, and setting her hat at one of them, in prim and proper white crisp cotton, like Gwen does as a matter of course. He likes that about Bridgid, that she doesn’t, but it’s not sensible. He’d bet, too, that when they reach the picnic spot, somehow, someway, Bridgid and Ben will end up near each other. Not so near that any watching parent would take note, but near enough to trade barbs and egg each other on. There now, her aunt’s noticed, and she’s called forward. Ben watches her go, and Jack can’t read the expression from where he is, but Ben rides over to Jack, and by the time they’re together, his face is relaxed, easy, hail fellow well met.   
“Saw Susie at the train station, she asked after you,” Ben sings out, and Jack flushes. Susie’s the daughter of the railway master, and she’s danced with Jack every chance she’s had, the last couple of years, and kissed him the last dance, a proper kiss, with hands and tongue and heavy breathing, out on the verandah. It’s no secret that she has a crush. It’s something Jack isn’t keen on navigating. The mechanics of it all are simple, sure, he was in the same lesson as everyone else at school, and she fits a daydream or two well enough, she’s sweet and simple, a smile for all the railway passengers, the shearers, the roustabouts, the teachers, the mining folk, and she wears her shirts tight, and that gives a fellow something to think about. But that’s as far as it goes. He has no desire to follow her about like a puppy, to be standing up the front of a church with a preacher and her father.   
“Who could blame her? I’m good on my feet, she said.”  
“And the rest.” Ben quipped.  
“D’you want me asking you some pointed questions, Benjamin me-lad? Because I can and all. I know who delivers Ms Jones’ eggs to the station when he should be starting in the fields of a morning. Who’s spent all their spare time fixing up the old Jones house, hammering down the shingles, learning how to turn wood, and why? I know your brother knows, but does Frau Baumgartner? Does Mr Jones?”   
Ben’s smile doesn’t exactly fall from his face, but it takes on a certain forced quality. ”That harpy? More poison than a king brown. For all your watching, what’ve you seen after all? I’ve been neighbourly. Brotherly. Can you imagine the plight of her, spinning like a whirling dervish from sunrise to skyfall without it? My mother would have a word to me if I didn’t. Leave me and her out of your dreams, brother Jack. Stick to Susie.”  
The sky becomes very interesting to Jack. There’s fishtail clouds, high up, and a wedgetail eagle circling, out to the west, in towards the mountains. High grass growing along the road, and brown gravel alongside it. There’s nothing and no one he can turn the conversation to from here. Spurs his horse on, and catches up with the others, taking the rear position behind his father.   
Ben stays behind. She’s neat on the horse, with two brown glossy long plaits down her back, and he really shouldn’t be watching, or thinking about her, and her legs, as they are wrapped about the horse, not that he’d say that to Jack. He shouldn’t be listening to the “if I were”, and certainly shouldn’t be contributing his own. He’s nothing to offer.   
When his mother had said, with too much clarity, that if he was stepping out with Bridgid, his brother should be coming along with him to the little Jones house, he’d laughed. Had repeated it to Bridgid, thinking she’d laugh too, given her propensity for drawing lines in the sand, but instead she said, with equal clarity, and unblinking brown eyes, “Save it, Baumgartner. We’re not sweethearts. Sometimes I’m not even sure we’re friends.” And that was him told.  
He’d told his mother, after that, and told her with firmness, that Bridgid and he were strictly business partners. She pays him a share of what she earns, for the service of the delivery to the station, which he does along with the Baumgartner wares. Strictly a business transaction, after all. H hasn’t said this to his mother, he’s not the Baumgartner brother who really ought to be having a chaperone. He also hasn’t said anything to either about the way in which she’s in his dreams, whether he likes it or not. Business is business, and there’s always need for more income than the Baumgartners have, and his mother had nodded, and complimented Bridgid on her business acumen, and him on his courtesy to a neighbour in need, as long as it didn’t stop him from her own delivery, and his own chores. Tacit approval given for unchaperoned time. So when she says, if this were my house, I’d need to fix the shingles, the shingles get fixed by the next time she’ll be visiting, and if she says thank you, it’s not when he’s there to hear it. He’s planted out the vegetable garden with cabbage seedlings from his mother’s patch when she’s not there also, and it will grow with the carrots, cabbages and cauliflowers, and the bitter lettuce he favours, unless she pulls all the seedlings, and he wouldn’t put it past her to do that, if she realises what he’s done. It’s just a shingle. It’s just a garden. It’s not like he’ll be living there. She hates him, after all. Just the last visit when she was there, when they were weeding out the other patch, she insisted that if she weeded her patch faster than him, he’d have to wear an eagle feather in his cap for the next week, and it’s there now, and Charles has already called him Yankee Doodle. If he could stop it, he would. It’s very inconvenient, and he’s hoping it goes away before he has to, before she finds her solution to her uncle’s ultimatum in the form of a travelling teacher, or grazier, or someone who isn’t him. It won’t be him, she’s made that quite clear. He’d quite like to kiss her anyway. Even though she hates him. It would be nice to be able to stop thinking about it.   
Gwen’s not listening to the burble of happy lad conversation as she rides, she’s off and away with the fairies, imagining riding along the green downs of England, of France, of Spain. When she’s never even been to Brisbane. She’s replacing the voices with someone singing in Italian, and the scrubby bush down by the river, the brown anthills, and dugout holes in the ground with an orange grove, and sparrows, and palaces off in the distance, and the loose fencing wire with gold embossing on the gates.   
Charles gave her a framed print of a castle, somewhere in the hills of Scotland, and she can imagine herself there too. She’s not stupid, she knows that the price of travel is someone like Charles, or Hugh or Richard, and she’s been told, and she understands her mother’s thoughts here, that Charles is a catch and a half, and she’s been told, and she understands that Charles fancies her. He’s objectively handsome, according to classic ideals and the pictures in the art books, but Bridgid’s also told her, and then directly afterwards, Charles, that he’s an idiot. Subjectively, she can’t bring herself to feel much of anything at all about it. That’s a problem for another day. For the moment, she can imagine, as much as an almost sixteen year old can, that the Darling Downs flatness is a Sicilian orange grove, and that she’s happy.


	6. 4 August 1914, Darling Downs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's welcome, until they are not

Wilhelm’s showing him for the fourteenth time how to turn the hardwood, he’s making a table which may happen to have the dimensions of a certain kitchen in mind, which he may or may not have measured last time he happened to have been over when a certain brown plaited girl was present, and calling him an overly optimistic interfering busybody and that the old table is just fine, and him deriving a perverse sense of satisfaction by pointing out all the problems with the old table, and that she couldn’t possibly fix it, and she can’t possibly make a better one than he, and he’ll show her that with Wilhelm’s help, if he’s lucky, when their mother calls them in. On the radio, a calm, solemn deep voice is announcing that Britain has declared war, that the Empire is mobilising, and it’s unthinkable. England and Germany at war against each other. His mother’s world, and this one, against each other. It’s as if to say that he would pick up a gun against the Stuarts. Against Bridgid. It’s horrific. Wilhelm has an arm around his mother’s waist, and he about her shoulder, and it’s not enough to clear it away.   
That week, as the news goes on, her pictures of Germany, and records of Beethoven are carefully placed ‘aus den Augen, aus dem sinn’, safely away in the cupboard. His father’s picture, normally next to her bed, is polished, and given central position in their sitting room, very clearly in British Imperial Army uniform.   
At church on Sunday, there’s a sermon on the Assyrians, and an address from Phillip about the perfidy of the Hun, and no one sits near them, and the Stuarts, who normally share their pew so that Margaret and Wilhelm can happen to sit next to each other, crowd in with others. No one, except Margaret, alone of her family, talks to them, and he sees Mr Jones holding Bridgid’s elbow, his wife flanking her other side and holding Gwen by the hand, as if he’s going to swoop down, and re-enact the declaration of war in person. He can feel the eyes. His mother holds her head high, and spends the rest of the day pickling sauerkraut, and if her eyes happen to water, why, that was just the onions. His mother doesn’t cry.   
That Monday, he mails off their letters, the ones that he and Wilhelm have written to their father’s regiment, the ones that volunteer their services to the Light Horse and tries not to think about his father not coming back. Tells himself it will be an adventure, if they are accepted. He doesn’t go to the little house, the one with the shingles that he’s nailed down, and he continues to work on the table. She’ll need the table, after all, whether or not it’s made by a filthy Hun, because the old one’s cracked and warped. The satisfaction of knowing that she and her future purely Australian rich city slicker husband, who he hates in concept only too well already even though he doesn’t exist, will have to see the table every time they take a meal together is enough. He’s going to get it done just to spite her, and her husband. Who he wants to punch in the face and he can see the face now, a smug amalgam of all the rich pure Australian kids that Charles has ever brought home and he feels so angry that he wants to volunteer all over again, just for the chance to hurt something. Someone. He wants to go and knock on the Jones door and call her out. Two of a kind, his mother had said, and how dare she snub him like that. To kiss her up against the barn door until she begs him to take her, that she doesn’t care that he’s a German, or a second son with no money, that she needs him more than anyone else in the world, and needs him now, and then feels sick and ashamed at the thought. He finishes the table, and stows it in the barn, against the day he can meet her eyes again. He works in the fields until sundown, with the horse and the plough till he’s no energy left, and Wilhelm has to put the sweet cream on his nose for the sunburn, and calls him a fool.  
Friday there’s a dead crow at the gate, hung on the fencepost, and a note that Wilhelm will not let him read, and burns without showing their mother.   
When he collects the evening post, however, there’s a letter back, from Phillip Smith, inviting him and Wilhelm to attend the big house the Friday after, for medical assessment and review of their riding and shooting skill, and it’s as if an invisible weight of ice has been lifted from his back, the guilt of having been born with the wrong pedigree removed.   
Saturday, he rides down to the little house, after he’s finished for the day, when it’s still light, because how can he not. She’s in the garden, with a bundle of weeds behind her, and a tangle of vines in front, and she looks like he’s picked the wrong day to try his luck, and that he’s going to be threatened with the sharp knife with which she’s slashing the greenery to pieces, and how dare he be here on her property, and so on. That she wants him gone, dead, in a million hurtful ways.   
This is not what happens. What happens is that she looks over her shoulder, and smiles, her brown eyes squinting against the sun. A proper smile, too, not one that looks like she’s thought up the perfect one liner to bring him to his knees, not one that includes the steel shutters that she puts up when Charles tells Gwen that she’s as beautiful as a Botticelli angel, and Gwen blushes prettily, and says nothing, a smile that makes him want to try for more, despite the knife. Perhaps after removing the knife.   
She says, bluntly, but still with the smile, and still with the knife, poised at the throat of the invading vines, threatening her cabbages, “Where’ve you been all week, then, Baumgartner?”   
“Didn’t think I’d be welcome, Jones. The horrible Hun, and all that.” He finds himself returning the smile, if a little tentatively.   
“You’re no less horrible than you were last week but you’re still as welcome or not as you were last week. Pick up your feet, or you won’t be.”  
He hitches up his mare, and tentatively walks down the garden, as if it were any other day, like a horse taking extra care where its feet print the earth, and finds a patch she hasn’t tackled, and they weed in silence. At first, anyway, because he can’t reasonably be expected not to respond if she remarks on the fact that he’s taking longer than she is with his patch like a little dove nibbling out the seeds, and she can’t reasonably be expected to stay silent if he tells her that she’s beastly to criticise someone who’s helping her out of the goodness of his heart, and she attempts to conclude that a beast of her tongue is better than a bird of his, and the long and the short of it is that they’re not very good at staying silent when they’re together.   
He bets he can find a bigger carrot than hers, and if he finds one he gets to eat it. When he fails, he says that the smaller they are the sweeter they are and eats it anyway, and she tells him “deine ist kleine als meine” with a terribly knowing face, knowing that he’s avoiding using the German, and cannot twit her back, and he spits the carrot head at her and she finds a suitable clod of earth which sprinkles in his hair. There’s a half hour argument about why it is that she’s not allowed to sign up, to serve her duty as a lighthorseman, against which he has no answer, for she’s as fair a seat as any of the fellows, and no worse a shot than most of them, and she won’t listen when he says that he’s barely entitled to a position on the subject, given the week in limbo he’s had, and throws another clod of earth at him, and he can’t help but describe to her how sweet she’d look in big and bulky khaki, like an overgrown boy, and she pushes him down in the dirt, carefully avoiding the vegetables. He thinks about pulling her down with him, and thinks again, because he’s on thin enough ice as it is, and throws a handful of brown dust at her carrots instead. They carry on like kids until half hour till sunset, when the weeds are placed in the compost heap, and stirred, and they mount up, and ride out, parting at the end of the lane, as if nothing had changed. Except that he can still feel the spot on his cheek where she’d kissed him goodbye, unasked for, and with nothing he’s done for it, in between the patches of dirt that cake him. That’s new. It’s definitely left an impression, and more than it should. She can’t hate him all that much then. Not really.   
Sunday, Phillip makes a point of shaking Mutti’s hand, and the week concludes as if it had never happened. If they are Germans, they are also the Germans who belong.


	7. May 1915

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no good way to end this, or start it

The music’s the same, but everything about this night is different, Ben thinks. Wilhelm, in Sunday best suit, and his new bride Margaret, finally! There’d been some heated discussions in the Baumgartner family, the month prior to the wedding, when Phillip finally gave them a date for the off, to bring to an end all the drilling, the competitions where the Baumgartners show up the city slickers for shooting while on horse, the practice gallops through the scrub where Charles demonstrates a surprising level of skill, given his city life, but not about the date for the off.  
No, his mother’s issue was that it was not responsible for Billy to leave a new bride behind. The wedding should be postponed until after the war. Unless Margaret was in a certain way, and if Margaret was in a certain way, then Billy had not listened properly. It transpired that Billy had not listened properly, or rather, that Billy had listened, and Margaret and he had decided that enough waiting was enough.  
Hence, Ben had had to sit through again the lecture that they’d all been given, the entire school, by his mother, seven years prior, when the fact that Bridgid was female was not relevant, and the diagrams his mother was drawing on chalkboards were entirely theoretical, and his sole focus of discussion was how to avoid the inevitable ragging that would ensue when his mother left, and they all sat for lunch under the one big tree, and people would ask him to draw the diagrams again with the right words, not the Latin ones, with Stephen shouting suggestions, and Percy laughing as loud as a wide mouth frog. Now, it’s only too vivid, especially since his own brother, and about to be sister in law have been used as examples, and his mother has phrased things as ‘when you’ rather than ‘if you’, and everything’s only too real. He’s nineteen, near twenty, and his bedroom is his now only on loan from the soon arriving future generation of the Baumgartners, not that it matters. He’s leaving in two weeks’ time, and he’s avoiding Bridgid, or trying to, because by the time he comes back, if he’s lucky enough to come back, she’ll be married to the rich nameless chap who stayed behind, and he doesn’t want to think about the diagrams in that context. He’s thought about things long enough.  
The wedding is this afternoon, and the baking madly for the week beforehand has been all his thoughts over, when he’s not thinking about what to say to Bridgid, when it’s time. He’s provided the pretzels, tying the dough over and over, and boiling and baking and salting, and having half imaginary conversations about the war, and death, and the farm, and he loves his brother, he really does, but if he never sees another pretzel again, it will be too soon. Margaret ate one, and pronounced it the best she’d ever had, and he thinks it likely that it’s the only one she ever has, but at least she ate it, and made the effort to be nice to Wilhelm’s little brother. The Stuarts have insisted that their lamb is the best in the Downs, and they be allowed to provide the entirety of the wedding supper, which his mother has reluctantly allowed, for she’d do everything if she could, but has reluctantly conceded that the mother of the bride should be able to participate in her daughter’s wedding, and that crisis at least has been averted. The Jones are also represented, for both Gwen and Bridgid insisted that they be allowed to participate in the baking and repay his mother’s kindness in teaching them how, which his mother could not deny, and although his mother has provided the wedding cake, they have supplemented by providing prune scones, caramel and sticky and brown. Of which he’s eaten more than his fair share.  
For in a fortnight, he and Billy and the horses, and the McGregors and the Stuarts will be on the train, and no home cooking will he see for the duration, however long that is, and he’s not thinking of that tonight. Charles and his father are on the train tomorrow, with their mares, to have a little extra time in Brisbane for Philip to tie up loose ends. Jack had tried to sign up, and they wouldn’t take him. Not quite light enough for the Light Horse, they’d said. Hughie had sniggered, but at least with the decency to do it behind Jacko’s back. Heartbreaking it was, to see Jack turn to Phillip, asking for intervention, the plea for a special case, and to see Phillip meet the recruiting officer’s eyes, and thank him, and move on. Jack’s to leave for the infantry with them in a fortnight, instead. Could have left for the hills, in Ben’s view, for all the thanks it’d get him, but Jack wouldn’t have a bar of it. My country, right or wrong, and all that. My father, right or wrong, and all that, more like.  
His mother circling the room, as always, with the resigned expression. Nothing was ever enough to have his mother smile. Always the expectation that it would go wrong. She’d already started to make plans for what she would do without them, organising a lease to the graziers over the bottom field, and to the big estate the top field, and only run the chooks, and the vegetable garden. He doesn’t ask, rather assumes, that this is what she’d done when his father died, when he went to war and didn’t come back. His father’s trousers are too small for Wilhelm now, but finally just right for Ben. He’s wearing them now. Not that it matters what the groom’s little brother wears, because Margaret is wearing a silk figured white dress that the Stuart’s must have had made specially, festooned with little white flowers, which must be the last of the orange blossoms, and there are pearls about her neck, and her mother’s special tortoiseshell combs holding her hair up, and Wilhelm’s cheeks must ache from the smile that he’s held since he woke this morning, and yet still wears even now, and no one needs to look at the younger Baumgartner in the presence of the bride and the groom.  
No one needs to be looking at him, but he can tell he’s being watched, although she ducks her head quick enough away when he turns to catch her in the act. She’s wearing the blue again, and her hair is up, off her neck, and she has such a white neck hidden under her hair that he almost forgives her for hiding it for so long. He's leaving in two week’s time, and it’s not long enough for all the “If I” games he’d wanted to play in the next year and a half, before she turned twenty one, and had to make a decision as to whether she was in love with anyone enough to settle, or whether to give it all up, and live with her aunt and uncle and cousin. Just this last one bout, tonight, at his brother’s wedding, and then he’ll get on the train and go to war and leave her to deal with her uncle, with the farm they’d put every spare minute into, hopes and dreams and everything unspoken, by herself. His father didn’t come back and neither did hers, and he’s tried to forget that in the year of training, to pretend that he’s like all the other kids who think they’ll never die, all gungho for adventure, but he can’t. This could be the last time he dances with her, and he really shouldn’t. He needs to leave her be and get on the train, and she’ll find the grazier who she falls for her and live her life without him. Even if he did come back, even then, he’s nothing to offer her anyway, his bank account is emptier than hers. He’s no farm. Even his horse is properly his mother’s. Best to leave it be. They’re something akin to friends, finally, and that should be enough.  
“May I have this dance?” There’s a tap on his shoulder, and he’s certain he knows who it is. He can feel his brother’s happiness from the other side of the room, where he and Margaret are receiving guests. His mother watching. She’s asking him, and he should do the sensible thing, plead a prior commitment to his mother, and fetch a cup of tea, go back to celebrating the happy couple, and their impending two weeks of matrimony. Avoid the last slings and arrows that she’s going to fling his way and will stick in his head forever, just like all the others. Not have the memory of her in his arms again, the length of her, and the feel of the curve of her back, because that’s going to be hard to shake.  
When he turns, up close, it’s the prettiest blue dress he’s ever seen, even if he part recognises the fabric as having been reconstructed from earlier versions of blue dresses she’s worn, it’s still the best of all of them. It flares out around her hips, and there are ribbons about her bodice, and the bodice is supported by something he can’t fathom because in all the years he’s been looking, surely she’s not been this statuesque, this, well, well-favoured, and the neckline that low, and her hair is up and out of plaits, as befits her almost twenty year old status, with tendrils around her face, like some sort of pre-raphaelite illustration, and he needs to make all the mistakes he’d been planning to accidentally make in the next year, to bring it in under the deadline her uncle’d given, he needs to make all those mistakes right now. Tonight.  
“If you must,” he says, and she affects a bored attitude, but allows herself to be swept in to the maelstrom. She’s pressed flush against him, and they’ve been doing this for enough years together that he lets his feet move on automatic, and allows himself to look down at her face. She’s flushed, and cheeks red, and lips pouting up at him like she wants to be kissed. If he’d had those extra years, or been more forthright in this last one, this could have been them, sitting across the room, receiving guests, and looking forward to a marriage bed, long lives together, all the rest, and to hell with the imaginary rich city slicker, because he’s not here tonight.  
But neither of their fathers came back. Odds are he won’t. So he’s not going to kiss her. She’s going to find the rich city slicker and stay here, safe and sound. After this dance.  
That’s the plan, at any rate. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, his mother’s told him. It’s in Ovid somewhere. Possibly. Bridgid would know. Bridgid’s eyes are dancing like she does know, and she’s wearing that dress again, and it flares out when he spins her, and he’s boarding a train in a couple of days’ time, and when he laughs because it’s too much not to laugh, she insists he tell her about what. Bridgid bets him it’s not Ovid, and when he insists that it is, and claims, with much stomach knotting, careful avoidance of eye contact, and internal voices telling him not to say anything, that if he’s right, she has to award him a kiss, she laughs. She doesn’t say no, and she only half stumbles when he says it, and he likes to think his arm is the only thing keeping her up, and his shins aren’t kicked this time, and the music dances on.  
It’s Bridgid’s warm body, flank against his, joyful against the violin, and her insistent feet taking the lead, which dances him out of the open door, and on to the verandah, where she lets him go. The verandah, province of the courting, and a place where they’ve never been before. There’s a curlew calling somewhere out to the west, into the night. A couple of crickets. No other living person, all the courting couples on the dancefloor tonight, circling around with Margaret and Wilhelm.  
He effects the pose of the winded, hands on hips, bending over. “Danced me off my feet there, old girl.”  
“You need to work on your stamina then, old boy.” She places her hands on the railing, stares out into the dark.  
He assumes the position beside her, arms brushing. “So, and?”  
“Your mother quotes a German, as she so often does. She told me his name, and it’s coming, ha. I have it! Helmuth von Motke the Elder. I have no idea if there’s a younger. So, you lose.”  
He whistles. “Once again.”  
He’s silent then, and he’s still thinking about kissing her, and he’s lost his last chance, for Bridgid’s not the kind of girl to kiss a fellow for pity. She’s silent too, and when he looks, she’s looking up to the dark night sky. The music thrums from the church hall, and time’s ticking. The crickets chirp.  
“This time next month, do you know where you’ll be?” she asks, as if she’s asking did his mother bake a plum cake or a fruit one for the wedding.  
“Even if I did, you know I can’t tell you. Secrecy, and all that. More than my life’s worth to say.” He bumps her shoulder.  
“I bet you you’ll be posted somewhere terribly boring. Far, far from the action, where all the dull things happen, and you’ll have no adventures at all.” She bumps his shoulder back. “If ever you get to be anywhere exciting, you have my permission to rub it in my face. Write me glowing descriptions of the fun you’ll have. Since you’re allowed to do your duty, and I’m not. But you won’t. I bet you won’t. When have you ever written a word extra when you’ve not had to?”  
“I will write to you about all of the things, for you will be sadly dull here, waiting for your rich city slicker to come and sweep you up, that’s for certain.”  
She bumps him again. “I’m never dull.” The night sky is more interesting than ever to them both. There’s a croak out in the paddock. Something moves in the grass, and there’s a rustle.  
“But if I don’t. If I’m not. Can you look in on my mother, please? And Margaret, and, you know, the baby?”  
“You’re coming back. Sure as eggs,” she says, confidently into the night. There’s the wind in the gumtree where the cockatoos roost, and the night’s fully black now.  
He clears his throat. The band starts in on another crowd pleaser, and there’s clapping from the hall, “Mr and Mrs Baumgartner” is being called, and his mother, her aunt’s going to come looking.  
“If I.” His throat’s stuck, suddenly.  
She turns, bravely. He doesn’t.  
“If you’re about to call me your sweetheart, you can save your breath. That’s where you’re going to go next, isn’t it?”  
He takes a breath, but it’s wasted, for there’s no space for him to say anything. He turns, and she’s looking almost angry, and almost sad, her mouth twisted shut.  
“Bridgid.” He holds up his hands, midway between them, palms close to her arms, waiting.  
She steps in, as close as she dares, as close as his brother and sister in law had been on the dancefloor. “You can have one last dance, and then I’m wishing you goodbye and good luck. This is it.”  
He brings up one hand, but misses hers, held up to shake, but it traces around her face instead, and she can feel it shaking.  
“Goodbye,” he whispers, and uses the other to hold her hand, and he can feel hers shaking, “and good luck,” and then he stops talking, as she leans in, and she’s kissing him anyway, even though he hasn’t earnt it, hasn’t won, and she doesn’t kiss fellows for pity.  
Her lips are softer than he expects, and the kiss is sweet and light, and when he opens his eyes, hers are shut. He finds his back suddenly against the church hall, cold, with shivers, and his breathing’s gone funny, and it’s time to end it before her aunt or his mother does it for them. The door opens for an instant, a crack of light into the dark, and he pulls her further back, away from it, and clears his throat. Tries to regain his balance.  
“Fate worse than death,” he nods. “That kiss, I’d say. Just the war, I expect. Charles tells me that girls always think they feel more than they do. Right?”  
She shakes herself free. “Don’t flatter yourself, Baumgartner. And, and, and if you think I’m sitting here waiting for you and knitting you socks, you need to have your head examined, and you’d be marked unfit. There are people in the lunatic asylum saner than you.”  
He shakes his head. “I’m not saying I’m sane. Just I bet I’m saner than you. I bet that if I come back- ”  
“When you come back, you mean,” she insists.  
“If I come back, you’ll have remembered this just as much as me. That’s all. Take care of yourself, Bridge.”  
The door is opened all the way, and the light floods into the darkness, and Margaret and Wilhelm sweep down the stairs and there’s a crowd of people swallowing up the steps behind them, and when it’s cleared, he’s gone.

He doesn’t come back to the little house, and she pickles the cucumbers, lays up the sauerkraut, by herself. It’s surprising how quiet it is, the chopping, and the boiling and the canning, and how slowly the time goes. She remembers what it was likely, dimly, when her father left. She remembers wanting to go with him, and her uncle holding her back, even as she kicked him in the shins, and screamed until her lungs were hoarse. She doesn’t remember clearly the day that her uncle told her that her father wouldn’t be coming home, or what that felt like. This feels empty. This feels angry, although that might be the chilis and onions she’s piling in with the pickles. She can’t do this again. She won’t.  
She’s at the station two weeks later, as is most of the town, and the platform’s too small for the crowd. There’s a queue for the stairs, and it’s the most action this little station’s ever seen, this little nub sticking up out of the stubble all around it, the dry yellow fields, the broken fencing wire, and the train, with its four whole carriages, two up on normal, gently chuffing the air with smoke. She’d make a joke, but it’s not funny, and all her classmates who’d normally be the audience for her quips are the ones boarding and being swallowed whole by this war. It’s not funny at all.  
Margaret’s crying, clinging to Wilhelm like she’s not going to let him be gone. He’s on the train first of all, and his head appears out the window, his shaggy brown head and half his upper torso with his arm fully extended over the track to hold hers, and Margaret trying not to cry, biting at her lip like she’s going to bite through, and Frau Baumgartner holding an arm around her, face like a frozen river, for Frau never cries, it’s impossible to imagine that it would happen, but she’s not taking her eyes off her son, the elder. Bridgid finds a lump in her throat, but lets them be. She’s not going to cry over Wilhelm. There’s no sign of Ben, and she’s betting he’s saying a last goodbye to the Baumgartner horses. She wishes he’d boarded already, then it’d be over and done with and she can draw a line under it, and they can be gone and back again already. Her uncle says it will be all over by Christmas. She has her doubts.  
Jack shakes their hands politely, first her uncle Griff’s, then her aunt’s, then hers, then Gwen’s, he’s off to France, and hopes to see the countryside, to be a driver for the guns, he says. Keep yourself safe, says her uncle, never mind about the countryside or those big guns. Come back safe and sound. Should all be over before Christmas. Jack cocks an eyebrow at him, but nods, and Gwen kisses him on the cheek, and he flushes.  
There’s the McGregor boys, who do the same, Stuart and Percy, and she remembers the stupid games of rounders, and now they’re off to France, and glory, and in khaki, and somewhere in the last couple of months, Stuart’s grown a moustache, and Percy a scrabbly beard, and they pat each other on the back, and tell Jack that infantry’s the way to go, no use bothering with the big guns, it’s the infantry boys who get the job done, and she’s no chance to tell them anything. Still not Ben.  
The Stuarts stop at Margaret, who’s dissolved into a puddle of tears, who can blame her, her husband and her brothers all at once, and bundle Jock and Stephen on the train without anyone else saying being given a chance to say goodbye, and Angus is fair fuming, she can see, at being denied his chance to fight, but he’s only twelve, and that’s not even remotely funny at all. The Stuarts, accompanied by Angus, make a fast retreat, and assume positions by Margaret, and she’s not looking at Lyndall in her white cotton and ribbons, with a handkerchief ladylike dabbing the tears away.  
In the flurry of Phillip and Charles boarding the train, and the little speech Phillip gives, standing on the platform, all in their neat and tidy and brand new khakis, and crisp slouch hats, emu plumes waving in the wind, she misses the point at which Ben appears by her side. She’s trying not to listen to the pomp and self importance of it, when she feels a hand take hers. It’s warm, and callused, and it quickly drops hers when she turns, because there’s the whistle blown. His hat has the eagle plume in it still.  
“Goodbye Bridgid,” he says. “And good luck.” He’s not smiling, exactly, face frozen against anything but the wind, blue eyes impenetrable, like ice. She’s having a hard time saying it, but she tells him to take care of himself and come home, and he nods, like she’s managed to say the lines from the script, when he didn’t expect she’d remember. There should have been a better, wittier, more final thing for her to say, and it’s sour in her mouth that for this, she’s failed. There won’t ever be another time to say anything to him, ever again.  
She doesn’t miss the way in which he swings on board, knapsack over his shoulder, neatly patched and halloos to his brother, and then the two brown rough shaggy heads are framed by the train window, and then waving to their mother, to Margaret, being held by her mother, all red and tears, and holding her arms about herself like she’s been hit in the stomach, Frau Baumgartner standing rigid by her side, one hand to her mouth, and then the train lurches down the track, one long whistle blow farewell, and they are gone.  
She should be on that train, she suddenly thinks, with a flash of clarity. So she can’t fight, and so what? There’s other ways of serving, and there’s nothing, truly when she thinks of it, of anything holding her back from it. She’s just the girl to do it, no one’s wife, or daughter, or right hand man. It’s just as much her cause as any of them, and so why not? Her Jimmy horse’s gone already to the war, or she’d sling herself on, and chase it down the tracks into the brown distance, over the scrabbly gravel and browned grass. Instead, she boards the buggy, and waits for her family, and her stomach is boiling with excitement. She’s going to the war, to save lives, and help her country. See the world. Escape the ultimatums with one slash of the Gordian knot. Gwen’s face is blotchy and red when she takes the seat beside her, grass seeds sticking to her skirt, and she shakes her head at Bridgid when she starts to ask.  
When she’s finally in her room at her uncle’s, at the tiny desk that she hardly fits under anymore, she writes the letter applying for entry into Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service, detailing her ‘training’ under Frau Baumgartner, her Red Cross first aid certification, her father’s service, and posts it in town, and waits. It can’t be long, surely, and she can breathe again. She’s going to leave, and that’s the thing she needs to do, and she’s not going to be the one who is left.  
It’s a month. QAINS and the Australian Army Nursing Service don’t want farmer’s daughters, they say when the letters come back. They want nurses, ones who know what they’re doing. They won’t be argued with. They won’t be met with. More important things to do. The Australian Red Cross will take volunteers, however, but they won’t pay them. Not much anyway. The money she’d put away against the day when she claimed her farm, is now money in play, against her doing her bit, like her father had done. Like Ben.  
She’s preparing to go in over the top with her uncle, when Gwen pulls out her letter from the Volunteer Aids Course, and does it for her. It’s a doozy of an argument, full of her aunt’s emotion, no place for a girl, Gwen, there’ll be blood, and death, and have you thought about what you’re doing, and her uncle’s reason, Gwen, you’d be the lady of the estate when Charles comes back, have you thought about that, and when Bridgid pulls her letter out, lies it flat on the table next to Gwen’s, they are both sent to their room.  
Bridgid pulls her travel bag out from under the bed. It’s dusty, and it’s not been used in years, and never by her, it’s a handmedown retrieved from her house, and at present, it houses only her father’s letters. She knows them by heart now, has had to ask her aunt to translate ‘cariad’ and explain hell hounds, and the story her father had written, of her mother, the fairest of all the flower maidens, and him the raven boy, smart against the night. She doesn’t need to take them. They’re bundled, neat and tidy, back in the paper that says “David Jones, found in possessions’. She’s choosing to believe that this is what her parents would want. Underclothes, and monthly pads, and smocks, and chemises, and Gwen is sitting on her bed, looking at her hands.  
“I’ve never done anything Father didn’t approve of. His face! Bridgid, are we doing the right thing? Bridgid? Stop for a minute. Please.”  
She does stop at that. In her head, though, she sees them all, stupid Charles, and Stuart, and Jock, and Ben, with the train, lurching down the track, and she sees them dead now, bleeding and hurt, and dead in a foreign land, with no grave, and Bridgid steadfastly refuses to look any more, or she’ll be crying too. Her bag is packed now, full of warm clothes, and bandages, and wraps, and she focusses on that. She’s the bandages, and she’s the training and surely they’ll all be home before Christmas. It seems ridiculous to think otherwise, but then, it’s ridiculous that because she’s a woman she can’t fight. It’s ridiculous that she had to use her savings to buy a place in the nursing service, when surely they’ll be needed as much as the fellows who fight. The horses! Uncle Griff’s volunteered not just his, not just Aunt Imogen’s, but also Jimmy horse, and she’s not foolish enough to believe that he’ll be coming home unscathed. That’s just the horses.  
Ben, and Billy, and Jack, and Charles, and the McGregors, and the Stuarts, and all of them, and it’s against the odds that all of them will come back. They’d taken a photo, all of them in their khaki, with the horses at the back, and it’ll stand on every house’s mantelpiece in their stead. Charles gave Gwen an extra, just of him, with his horse, in a handy size so as to take in her bible, because of course that’s packed. Gwen had thanked him, and shaken his hand, and he’d stolen a kiss from her cheek, and she’d blushed, and cast her eyes down, like a girl in one of her aunt’s Jane Austen novels. Bridgid, on the other side of her uncle’s parlour, had suppressed a laugh. Sobered, when Charles handed her one of the whole group, to remember us all by, he’d said. Uncharacteristically thoughtful.  
She has it now, in her bible, and she’s refusing to get it out and look at it, in particular the one chap who’s standing out from another memory holding his hat in his hands, and looking out at the sunset, and talking about the future in elliptical terms, and the house he’s going to paint, and he won’t be there to do it.  
“There’s no right thing to do, or not do, and you damn well know it or you wouldn’t have written your own letter without talking to me. You want to do it as much as I do. Your father’s going to stump you the money once he stops being angry at you having an idea that’s not his. Two days and we’re to Brisbane. Then everything.”


	8. June 1915, Brisbane docks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack finds a place in the world

The 25th Battalion, Australian Infantry is a band of misfits. Tall, short, thin, fat, a sea of khaki, and mostly white faces, and he knows no one and no one knows him. He’s given a nickname instantly, Black Jack, and he tells himself not to mind. There’s a lad from a similar situation two rows over in the carrier, and he’s nicknamed, with another startling lack of originality, Black Bob. He’s hoping they’ll both pass. Someone’s brought a wallaby on board, a good luck mascot, and it’s scratched the living hell out of anyone who comes near it.   
The boat has a slow sway from side to side, down in the dark where the hammocks are, and he feels queasy for a day, but then desperately hungry. The food doesn’t compare with home, but that’d been a high bar to match, and it’s edible, and warm and there’s plenty of it, and it’s something to do, while they’re waiting. The sergeant comes around and talks to them every so often, motivational speeches, and so on, but there’s no attempts at drills. Not enough room for that. They’re shepherded up to the deck by the numbers to do fitness training, and that’s fine, because by the end of the first week, he’s desperately bored. At least at home, there were always things to do. There’d been horses to tend, and fences to mend, and sheep, and at night, learning French and maths, with the riding the Light Horse recruits have been doing the last year, and here on the boat, there’s nothing. He tries to not feel too smug about his father, and Ben, and Charles, and all the rich light kids having to muck out sea-sick horses, which has got to be worse, he reckons, than sea-sick infantry recruits. There’s nothing for him to do here that he cares about.   
Nothing for him to do, that is, until he learns how to play cards. There’s inevitably a pack of cards that someone brings out at some point during the day, and it’s inevitable that he’s drawn in, and then, somewhere in the second week of sailing, the numbers click in, and he’s a winner. He’s not Black Jack anymore, he’s Poker Face Jack, and he has a place and a way to belong. His pay’s being sent home, for safekeeping, a bank account that the station will manage, but he’s not short of the ready anymore. It’s freedom, and as long as he doesn’t win for too long against the same crowd, no one minds.  
Stepping off the boat, he feels the earth dip and sway, and the dust rises up around his ankles. It’s hot, and the air feels lacking somehow, or perhaps that’s simply relief from the sweat soup he’s bathed in the last month or so. He’s not the first to strip down, make an unceremonious pile on the pavement where they’re marshalled waiting to be told what to do next, the first to jump in the water and splash it up over his mates, but he’s not the last either. Brothers are ducking each other, but when he puts his head under, it’s not clear enough to try to pull anyone down by the feet. Someone produces a ball, and they throw it about, until it goes too far and is lost to the current. It feels good, like a holiday, like they’re all on an adventure, good enough to make the dressing down they receive a minor thing.  
There’s a British officer who looks over and through him, but he’s doing it to everyone, anyone who’s not from England, and he’s barking out orders, and numbers, and eventually they fall in, with many pointed remarks about colonials, and lack of discipline, and respect. Clothes are put back on, and buttoned. Salutes are given. The ship refuelled, they reboard.  
The holiday mood doesn’t last, as senior officers are walking through the ship, sounding off about proper process, and the need to check by the numbers their gear, their guns, their bullets, that this time tomorrow they’ll be earning their keep, and it sounds like a threat, not a promise. The officers are sober, and eventually they are too. It’s not real, though, it’s all in the future, and there’s a game of cards, and winnings to be had that are more immediate that anything to do with the heavy gun he’s checked and rechecked, and that’s a problem for later.   
As the ship throbs through the night, Jack finds himself at the railing, watching the hillocks of islands loom large, and then recede into the black. There’s noises too, sudden and violent and far off, and he tries not to think as he goes below, nudging his way into a hammock, and falling into sleep.


	9. June 1915, Melbourne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben assumes the persona

Dear Mutti  
A short note, from your tall boy, to say we are all embarking tomorrow, Wilhelm sends his love. He is writing separately to Margaret. Wilhelm and I are together in a squadron with Phillip Smith, and Charles, and his city friends Richard and Hugh, and Stephen and Jock Stuart. No finer company anywhere will you find.   
The troops are in fine spirits, and itching to be away. Our horses are ahead of us, and we will meet them in the Middle East. It seems so strange to be here, with my brother, as if it were simply another day in the fields, but reality quickly intrudes when we step outside the tent, and into drill. Wilhelm will be promoted soon enough, as he finds the military order soothing to his soul. I am keeping my tongue in check, do not you worry, but the crowds of men, in such a small space, are not to my taste. I’ve only started one quarrel, and that with a fellow who had not bathed since the year dot, so the army took my side on that one. Charles has been in several, and all mostly relating to who has the better stomach for drink. I will draw a veil for obvious reasons, but note that if this is what city life has to offer, I do not need it.   
I confess only to one final hurrah, and a headache the next morning to remind me that I should have listened to my mother, which Wilhelm made sure to tell me over and over again. Wilhelm, always prudent, stayed sober and made sure we all made it back to the camp. He manages, as always, to find the happy side of our situation, and has made several sketches to send back to Margaret, and I trust you will see them soon enough.   
Brisbane is the fine city you said, but I think you would find Melbourne more charming. There are many Germans here, and I ate for you a pretzel. Yours are better, but theirs are here.  
I will write to you when we are on the other side of the world. However, we have been read the riot act about not being too indiscreet with place names, or casualty numbers, or any strategy that we may be privy to, so you will need to excuse the way in which I write, and not ask me for further and better particulars, in the way that you so often do, Mutti, for then my letters will be censored, and you will not have them at all.  
It is strange, but I am looking forward to the off. There is a stirring in my blood at the thought of the charge, the prospect of the battle. Overly romantic, I know, but still, honesty demands I tell you this, my mother. I am certain that reality will crush the stirring soon enough.  
Your son,  
Benjamin


	10. 30 June 1915, France, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> France is not quite what Gwen expected, but satisfying nonetheless

I do not quite understand how I am here. It seems only yesterday that I was at home, staring at the paintings and wishing I was elsewhere, and now I am the other side of the world, having glimpsed England’s green and pleasant land and set foot, most thrillingly, ashore, if only for a brief week. England smells different, it feels different to Queensland, even the wind is not the same. At home, if it were this temperature, we would have flies, and mosquitoes, and Father would be expecting rain, but here, this kind of a temperature is a hot day, and exceptional, and people fan themselves, looking for comfort. The air is less damp, to the extent that air can feel damp, and the breeze here is soft, and almost playful. That’s England, though. Where I am now is not England, or soft, or green at present.   
I can’t say I think much of the English officers I have met. Each, to a man, addresses us Australians as colonials, as if to say we’re a separate breed. Which is frightfully odd, given that it was them that put us there. It’s us who have come to help them in their hour of need. My mother would have some words to say on the subject of gratitude. Perhaps it’s only the officers who are like that. Although the English matrons in charge of the wards are also very dismissive, and I have seen someone fined already for being out of uniform, as her veil was still drying, after being washed to remove bloodstains, and another fined for being late to duties, because she had worked another shift in another ward at the other end of the camp, and it does in fact take time to walk across. I will try hard to not give any cause to raise their ire, but it seems impossible not to, simply by the fact of being there. The doctors and nurses are doctors and nurses, and do not care where we are from, as long as we are there when we are needed.   
We are definitely needed. Both Bridgid and I were right to come, though my fanciful daydreams of green hills, and soldiers nursing slight wounds of the sort that happen about our farm, needing only a patch and a pat, and a kiss on the cheek as a reminder of what they’re fighting for, those daydreams are incredibly wrong. I thought that all soldiers would be brave, and full of conviction and bellies of fire for the battle, and I did not know, not really know, what it would mean to have to send men who have almost died back into the fight, with the knowledge that they may not return. Charles, and all our poor Darling Downs boys who were so quick to volunteer, and I do not know how many will return. I do so wonder how Charles and all our lads are getting on. Charles with all his conviction that he would lead the battle to glory, and come home to me, and take over from his father, pipedreams that will, I am sure, not come to pass. He is a dear fellow, but somewhat given to living in flights of fancy, and not in the here and now. I am glad he did not ask me to wed him before he left, for I would have had to say yes, and then I should not be here, to fill this gap and do this work. It is satisfying to know that I am labouring for a great cause and to see the faces of those that I help, even if they are not the dashing knights that my fanciful daydreams painted them as.  
There is a steady stream of wounded that come from the front, twice, or three times or even more a day, and some are in a fearful state, with legs missing, or even parts of their face, and these are the ones who live long enough to make it to us. Some of them smell, not just of the normal smells of death, the blood, and urine, and sour vomit and faeces, but strangely of flowers, and when they do, they are treated separately, for fear that the gas from their bodies may infect us all. The poor boys, it is truly dreadful, and I have been here for less than a month.   
Jack must be here somewhere in France by now, and the rest in the Middle East. I hope that I do not see Jack come through anywhere I am, and that they all stay safe and return home before long. Even as I write that, I feel hopelessly naïve. It is impossible with this stream of wounded coming through that they will all return unscathed.   
I was told by one of the nurses, a kind Englishwoman called Clementine, that at first the hospitals were only to be staffed by the English QAIMNS staff, but that they quickly relented, when it became clear that they hadn’t the numbers, and then, after they called on the AANS, and couldn’t make up all the numbers there, that they allowed us Red Cross VAR to come on board, so there is still a feeling of superiority but they should be over that soon enough, given there’s not enough time for the nurses to tend to the basic needs of the patients as well as the medical ones. That’s what Clementine says. She’s a QAIMNS, so has seen some things already. She said that there was an air raid last month, where they used the bed pans as helmets. Just fancy! I can’t imagine it would do any good, but it probably doesn’t do any harm, as long as the bed pan’s clean, is what I said, and Clementine laughed and laughed. She is shorter than me, but with that true English rose complexion, and fairytale yellow gold hair, although the poor dear has a limp from a childhood accident, and I like her tremendously. It’s fun to have a friend, after all these years of it being myself alone with Bridgid as a big sister being held up as an example of what not to do. Clementine has shown me, in one of the off shifts, how to make the beds properly, so that I do not receive any further reprimands. It seems a little bit ridiculous to place such importance on ensuring the beds are properly made, rather than on ensuring we have sufficient beds for patients, although I do understand about pressure, and bedsores, it seems a trifle secondary a concern. Some poor fellows are sharing, and it’s not fair to see the one wake the other, as they sleep, and moan, and curse at their lot, or to see one die, and the other live, and rejoice in the extra space, sad though he is to lose his bedmate. No one should have to suffer like these fellows are.   
The food is not very good, although I feel disloyal to say it, when I know what the troops must be facing not fifty miles from here. There’s never quite enough of it either, and isn’t that the joke, that although you wouldn’t want to eat it, you miss it when it’s gone. Clementine says she used to be tremendously fat before she came out, although I don’t believe it for a second, and that war is the ultimate slimming diet. How perfectly ridiculous. I am perfectly ridiculous to care about it one way or another, as one of the most frustrating jobs I have is to try to spoon in some gruel to the few patients we have who survived a wound to their face, who have lost part or all of their jaw, or cheek, and who seem always to need to swallow, as the spit glands try to moisten the missing parts. We have teapots, that we tip into the holes, where the spoons will not work. I cannot, should not complain about my food, when I still have the facilities to eat it.  
The war is ever present in our talk. We never talked of it back home, other than Father remarking on the overall tenor, or Charles and the fellows training to come across, and it was not real to me in the way it now is, with the blood of the poor fellows needing to be washed from my clothes at the end of each shift, the way in which we have to remove the dead unobtrusively, and as matter of factly as possible, so as to not further upset the ward, and the sound of the shells that wakes us on the hour from the front. I thought I would be more afraid than I am, but I have been too busy. Speaking of which, there is the ward sister, and so I shall finish here.


	11. July 1915, Egypt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is in a story come to life, and a little dazzled, and still not with anything yet to do

Dear Mutti  
A shorter note, to say that we are here, it is hot and the air drier than home, the flies are less though. I remembered my Herodotus, for which many thanks, and feel the history with every step.   
I’ve never seen so many people in one place moving in such chaos, Australia has more order, which would surprise you, I’m sure. The houses are small and on top of each other, one on the other like so many ants’ nests, and the people as busy as them too. I should not have presumed to judge what city life was like based on Melbourne, for this is something quite different again. It is fascinating, like a Breughel painting from your book of art, too many details to take in at one glance.   
Our commander is English, and very English at that. He thinks we colonials are fools, and speaks accordingly. We have a commanding officer however who is one of our own, and Philip is our immediate report, so that is fine. He likes to be addressed as Major now, not Philip or even Pip. Charles feels every inch of the reflected glory, let me say. He has been assigned a role as runner, for which he is not best suited, but will keep him from harm, Major says. I was not aware that staying free from harm was part of a soldier’s duties.   
Don’t worry, though, I will behave myself, as you remind me so often to do. I will make my salutes, and shine my shoes, and do what I need to do to get on with things, for this is an adventure of sorts, and they say the war will be over by Christmas, so I will write to you then, if not before, to let you know when to expect me home. Wilhelm has written separately to you and Margaret, I believe, but he still tells me to send his love with mine, as a good son should, and as no doubt I neglected to do in his letter to you, as the black sheep should be expected to fail to do in any case. It’s a good thing you have one proper son, and that that son is not me! Thank you for the letter which greeted me on arrival, a familiar note in a strange land. In the letter should be some grains of sand, a memento of Egypt for you to save.  
Your son  
Ben


	12. July 1915, the Gascon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridgid's a soldier now of sorts, because it hurts too much to be anything else

The hospital ship rocks less than the voyage over, but enough to move the bodies, the dead and the living tumbling on each other, and she doesn’t get sea sick anymore. They’d started with wounded to one side, and the dead to the other, and there’s now no space to separate them, and Bridgid has to step carefully. It’s hard to tell now where the line is, and some fellows on one side quickly satisfy the criteria of the other, and no longer need her help and it all happens in the middle of the night, in the dark, as the boat rocks. She can’t remember when she last slept.   
She’s forgotten the crowded chaos of Alexandria, the smells of warm spices, and the cloth draped bodies, because here there’s no escape from the smell of death, the warm air stagnant on them all, and she knows that she too smells of sweet sour rot, and shit, and cannot smell it anymore. There’s not enough doctors and nurses to see everyone, and not enough VAR to fill the gap, and she’s painfully aware every time they pull out from the shore that there are more wounded lying there, men who will be dead before the next hospital ship pulls in. That life is full of moments, and not all moments are followed by more.  
They can see the shelling, and hear the shooting, as they approach, and there’s always shrapnel for fun, for those that disembark to help with the onloading. Bridgid’s not one of those, she’s a woman, and a VAR, and no title to speak of, and while the first time she watched, to see if she knew any one, could see anyone, any familiar face, any Queensland slouched hat, a chap was felled on the beach, a sniper, or an unlucky shot, or shrapnel, and was gone in an instant, like a soap bubble pops, if a soap bubble left behind a corpse, and mates struggling to get off the beach, and so she doesn’t watch any more. The photo in her pocket, with all their faces shiny, and their clothes pressed, and them standing up straight, ready to be counted, seems unreal, like a different world. She can see her eyebrow cocked up, and she can remember being caught by the camera in their school photo an instant before telling Ben that he had an actual rats nest under his hat, and she can see Ben’s eyes slantwise towards her. It’s too hard to look at the faces now. There’s no way, no reason that they would be spared, when she has the proof in front of her that there’s no sparing anyone. Ben’s gone, everyone she cares about is dead, like her father, and she’s accepting that now. It’s easier.  
There’s always help needed once the bodies are brought on, and while at first she tried to see where the need was, and fill the gap, she’s been shouted at one too many times for showing initiative and being a damned fool, and now she goes where she’s told, and does what she’s asked, and takes orders like a soldier. There’s bleeding to be stopped, or slowed, and that doesn’t always work. She’s lost count of the number of times it hasn’t worked. She holds bandages as nurses pack bones, ready for surgery. She holds patient’s hands, while the doctors work on them. It takes a while to saw through bone, it transpires. The patients bite down on wood, or scream, or pass out. There is so much blood.  
She never sleeps quite enough, and she feels guilty for doing it, when she has a chance to feel anything, in the instants before her eyelids close and the terrible stars compete with the shell bursts for blazing. There’s not enough time, and not enough people. She feels guilty that she didn’t train as a nurse. That she didn’t volunteer sooner. There are so many dead.


	13. August 1915, Gallipoli

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben follows orders

Dear Bridgid  
I find myself braver this side of the world, away from your mocking, than in the same room, and so I am writing to you from here, as you commanded. If you did not want me to write, then you should not have dared me into it. I will allow myself this one piece of sentiment, that I will keep that photo of you (and the rest of our schoolmates) in the Bible my mother has sent with me, and you will not be able to see how often I am looking at it to see your face. If I were there, then I would not be wasting time with looking at the photo, with you in arms’ reach. Life’s too short here not to tell you that.  
If I go on too far in that way, you will stop reading, I am certain. Ahead of myself, is what you’d say. Not your sweetheart, as you emphatically said, and you broke my heart before I knew it was yours to break. If I describe in too much detail, on the other hand, where I am, and what we are doing, I will be censored. Here I find myself poised on the knife edge, between the heaven I did not know I had, when I had it, and the hell of these craggy edges where we dig our own burrows and hide like rabbits, and I sorely wish you were right and I was far from here, although fun is not what I’d describe what we’ve been having.   
We had more men than horses, when we arrived, and now no one is short of a ride. No, I’ve not seen Jimmy. Plenty of good walers though, in fine condition now they’re off the ships. It was no fun mucking out with a moving hull around you, and the stench was pretty foul, I’ll never complain about the conditions at home again.  
Don’t tell Mutti, but we swam in the canals of Port Au Said, although we were dressed down for it, and it was on par with our creek for the colour of the water, but like the water of a bath for warmth. I exaggerate, I confess. Warmer at any rate than that back home. You would find the towns most interesting, I’m certain. Houses on top of houses, and mazes for streets, just the kind of puzzle you like. I’m told that if we are sent back to Egypt, we will have a chance of seeing the Sphinx, and I know how much you’d like to see her, so I will do my best to describe her to you, if ever we should meet again, if you promise not to be too jealous. I tried on the voyage over, but did not see the city where Paris took Helen, Troy of legend, which we pored over for so long. If you were here, I’m sure you would have insisted on the boat taking a detour, although at present it would be the opposite of safe to do so.  
Don’t tell Mutti this either, but our commander reminds me of her, although she has more humour. More sense, too. The same insistence on tidy shirt, shoes, and belt buckle. We’re in a country made of sand, and yet, polish, polish, polish. Charles and his friends find that somewhat easier to manage than Stephen and Jock and myself, but we will scrape through somehow. Billy boy of course does not complain, and who knows what Phillip thinks, as he is senior officer, as Major, and above us all. Still, we are lucky to still have him.   
On landing, some of the officers were picked off by snipers. Despite that, there are still bathing expeditions, for the small soldiers’ friends find a home in every nook and cranny of one’s body, and the itching is fierce and the cool water provides relief. One simply has to hope that the Turks’ range is insufficient, but it makes for a quick swim.  
The place where we are living now lacks for rooves, and walls, and certainly has no pleasant paint about it. Every night is a new fireworks display, and I’m sure you would have fun calculating trajectories, but I find myself a little busy, you can guess with what. Every so often, the Turks experiment with trajectories themselves. This week, Stephen caught a little present that they were so kind as to throw over to us, and lob it back to them, and you will well recall from rounders how good his arm is, such that it arrived back to them in good order before it reached its appointed time. We experiment ourselves with some concoctions made from used food tins, and black powder and send them over to see what the Turks will make of them.   
Our staple diet at present, when we have time to eat, is something of which no dentist would approve, hard tack biscuit, which we soften in plenty of hot black sweet tea. Again, do not tell my mother.   
If you find yourself thinking of me when it’s quiet and you miss my teasing, I would welcome some socks. I dare you to write me back.  
Yours, always  
Ben


	14. August 1915, Lemnos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridgid's following orders

She feels sea sick, and the earth is surely rolling, though her eyes tell her it’s still. Bridgid should be happy to be free from the ship, and its evil smells, and the flies, but it’s hardly better here.  
She should be asleep, she’ll be back on duty all too soon, as the tugs play the part of Charon, and ferry in the endless bodies from the front, but she can’t. Her hips ache against the soil, the hollow she’d dug out not wide enough, or soft enough, to afford any comfort. The flies still buzz, even though the sun is setting, and there are flies everywhere, especially on the still nights, like tonight. She can hear the moans of the soldiers, around the side of the hill, and the voices of her workmates tending them, the cries for help, for mother, for God or anyone to listen, and in the distance the boom of the guns, and at least tonight there’s no rain, and no mud.  
Her head yet aches from the sun of the day, and the heat hasn’t faded, not yet. She feels roasted, turned inside and out, worse than the soldiers she tends, the poor lads with the bones showing, and those with the maggots already, that she must leave on to eat the infection out. There’s fellows with red streaks up from the wounds, that the doctors have stopped treating, and they’ve been told not to feed, not that they’d been eating much anyway. Others with yellow swelling around the wounds, who hit themselves, to try to relieve the pressure, and there’s not much they can do for them either, bar amputate, and those are the worst operations to help with, and they take too much time, and they don’t have enough surgeons.   
One last look at the photo, and she stows it away.  
She doesn’t remember falling asleep but she’s shouted out of bed, dereliction of duty, feeble colonials, and why is her uniform dirty? There’s no answer to any of it that she can give honestly without being docked further, and so she smiles and tells the matron that she makes a wonderful alarm clock, and she will miss it when she’s home, and the matron calls her cheeky, but blessedly moves on.  
Where the matron had been, is now the glory of dawn, for the sky is filled with all the oranges, and pinks, and yellows that she’s ever imagined, more glowing than at home, more radiant, and it’s so beautiful it hurts, like the crescendo of the Vaughan Williams, and music fills her head, as she dons the veil, and the skirt, and the pinafore apron, and walks to her day of duty, and does not look at the shallow graves to the west.


	15. August 1915, Lone Pine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's following orders

Jack’s been in this trench for too long. The last month, solely movement, from the moment ashore at Suvla, with bullets stinging the sand around them, into the crags, and nooks of the hill, and scampering up to the first, and then the next, and the one after that. Black Bob’s gone now, and he can remember the randomness of it, talking over dinner, trying not to crack the teeth on the grit and hard biscuits, and the next, the shrapnel through the eye and him down on the ground for good. He can’t even remember the conversation. They’ve moved like ants, and the British treat them like ants, if one ant dies, as long as there’s more, all’s well. They’d lost their officer on the beach to a sniper, and they should’ve made him take off his hat, so the Turks couldn’t know him for what he was. There’d been another English officer assigned to them soon enough, who didn’t even bother with their names. You there. Blackie. Push on. You must have scouting skills, you native, you go ahead. Next hundred feet, tell us if it’s safe.  
He’d felt sick to the gut with fear. Sick to the gut with anger, too, but his fellow soldiers clapped him on the shoulder, and someone had to be the one to go, and it might as well be him as anyone else. He’d really prefer it not be him, that he wake up and find himself back in the homestead, back on the Downs, or at least that it be one of his fellow soldiers, and not him, but if Bob can die eating dinner in what should have been a safe place, stands to reason that he’ll be safe where there should be danger. Right?   
He’d looked to the sky, to see the moon half full, half covered in cloud, and thought, might as well be now as ever. The edge of the trench crumbled in his hands, but his mates gave him a push up. Silently, except for the scrabble of his boots, he’d pushed through the scrub, letting the branches back slowly. To see the glint of metal up ahead. Metal on a belt buckle, a belt buckle on a body. Frozen stiff, he’d made himself advance, hearing every scrape on the dirt as if amplified in the silence of the concert hall, his breath loud in his ears. The body didn’t move. There was another under it, equally still. The flies of the day were gone, and they could have been sleeping, waiting for their turn to go on watch. Rustling bushes up ahead, and a Turk scout appeared, half obscured by the bush, but the motion of his gun quick enough, and Jack found himself pulling up his pistol, and he was lucky, and the Turk wasn’t, with Jack’s first shot finding a home in his chest, and he could hear, as if far away, as if he was underwater, the man gasp for air. Older than Jack, too. Probably with children at home. His land, not Jack’s, and he’d killed him for it.   
Forcing himself to wait, he’d watched, as the man stopped breathing. Watched the face relax into death, sickened at himself. Waited. Then pushed into the bushes, inch by excruciating inch, to look up the incline, and watch, see branches move in the wind, and branches move against it, and look again, look more clearly. To find the place where the scout must have emerged.   
He’d have time yet, he guessed, before they’d come looking. Dead of night, no one expects their scouts to be quick. Still, he’d felt every second go as if a greyhound raced it, before he’d made the safety of his trench, and delivered the information, and promised himself he’d never scout again, before the same British officer ordered them up and over, and the adrenalin once again took him. They’d taken the trench, with the Turks fighting to the last, and the bullets stinging the air, and they’d held the trench for all of an hour, before the next Turkish reinforcements pushed them back, and he’d stumbled on the corpses he’d found on the way out, and ducked back into the same hole as he’d been in not two hours prior.   
It’s roasting hot during the day, and perishing cold at night. There’d been proper bush, proper trees all bent with the wind, the older hands said, but the green scrub now is not enough to do any good for concealment, not really. Little birds, too. Yellow flowers, some like home. There’s still some in the little dips and hollows which are too steep or too exposed for use. There’s only a few moments of beauty like this that he has frozen into his mind. He’s trying not to remember anything, not the faces of his mates in the trench, because he’s lost too many now, and he’s only been in this trench for a week, not the distant faces of the Turks, whose land they’re on, and who have every right to not want them there, and not the faces of his friends from back home, who must be somewhere here, if they’re still alive, not his father either. He heard that the 3rd Light Brigade made a splendid charge at the Nek, for all the good it did them, and hopes the 4th won’t face similar orders. None of the orders make any sense, and he can see his officers wrestle with them. The up and over the top, wave after wave, to find as you crawl along the bodies of your mates them dying and dead, to use their bodies as shields, for all the good that does, it makes no sense. They are ants trying to move the tide, and the tide won’t be moved, and there’s only one way out of here now, and that’s death.   
The trenches while they wait are almost worse. When it rains, and the trenches fill up, feet swelter in the boots, and then with the cold, freeze. Such a stupid thing to complain about, but they do. To move fast, under the bullets, going over the top, feet are important, Jack reminds himself. The big gun is just along from them, and so is the recipient of much Turkish hospitality, and they need to continually be alert for the grenades. He’s thrown several back himself, and been luckier than some, who weren’t quite as quick, and lost hands, the blood and the shrapnel everywhere, and the shouting, good god, the shouting, as they scramble for it, call for the stretcher bearers. The stretcher bearers have the worst job, he thinks, moving between the fortified areas, and he’s seen some go down themselves. The first time he saw that, he went to help, and his mates pulled him back, pointing out the sniper, and they focussed their concerted attention on that target instead. When he turned back, to see the stretcher bearer, the body was still. They use the bodies now as shields, heaving them up over the top. They’ll bury them later, if they hold.  
In the last push to get to these trenches, they’d left their wounded behind, to receive medical attention when they could, if they could. It’s different leaving wounded behind on a retreat, which would be unthinkable. You take your own home with you. A chap from Melbourne, Andrew Beresford, who’d been always good for a natter about the state of the world, he’d bought himself a trip to a hospital ship with a gut wound, and they’d had to leave him there. At least the trench had been dry. At least he was down out of sight, not up exposed between the trenches. More chance than many, Jack had thought, but he’d bet Andrew was dead now. He’s learnt there’s no real chance of coming back from a gut wound. They talk sometimes at night about where they’d prefer to be shot, having their druthers, and he’s fastened on his left leg. There’s more of it than an arm, is his thought, and he’s always been better at riding than running anyway. There’s no real point in thinking on it. He’s been lucky so far.


	16. December 1915, Gallipoli

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben writes two letters home, carefully edited on the one hand, and not so carefully edited on the other

Dear Mutti  
Christmas without you is a sad thing. Wilhelm and I sang for the boys, O Tannenbaum, and we all sang some fine English carols, but it can’t compare to your fireside. I miss you and your fine cooking.   
You would be proud of Wilhelm and I, we are both now feted as marksmen of the first order, although neither of us have had a chance to show off our seat as horsemen. We are doing the Baumgartner name proud.  
The war will not be over any time soon, so I ask you to keep me and Wilhelm in your thoughts. Thank you for the socks, and the jam, and your kind letter.   
All my thoughts are of home at present.   
Much love  
Ben

Dear Bridgid  
I missed the heat of my mother’s house this Christmas. There’s ice where we are, in some of the places where the sun does not shine, although it’s gone by noon. Snow falls and it is not welcome. It is not as pleasant as the songs make out, certainly not when one has to sit and fight in it. Hard, and steals the warmth from your bones until you forget how warm Christmas should be, and the heat of our good Queensland sun.   
If I were there, I would be wishing you a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year, and trying to convince you that the grape vine by your father’s apple tree makes an adequate substitute for mistletoe, and that you should take a walk with me at night to watch the falling stars. Here there’s no need for falling stars at night, for the Turks provide illumination enough, when it is not raining. It rains very often here, in these winter months. I find I do not care for being constantly wet, but you would probably tell me that I smell better for it, and I would laugh at that, and I would live on the hope that your hand might find its way into mine, so that would be fine.   
Wilhelm writes to Margaret more often than I have written to you, but they are married, and she must be in need of reassurance, as her time approaches, so I hope you will forgive me for not writing more often. When he’s not writing, and we’re not hard at work, he’s whittling a piece of wood stolen from the rocks, to take home as a toy for the babe, once it’s born. Also, Margaret writes back, so I am told. Perhaps I should write to Margaret. I will not tease you anymore that way, or you shall throw my letters out unread, and I do like the thought of you having to puzzle out my handwriting, which you so often complained of when we studied Latin together. What I took for granted then, I shall not do so when I return, and I mean to make good all my deficiencies in courting, if you will allow it, if I am lucky enough to do so. I mean to start with your hair, as brown as a nut, and that needs to be let out of the tight plaits you have it in perpetually, and combed free and wild in the wind as you are. I miss you.  
I have sad news, of which you may have already heard: Richard, Charles’ friend, who you may remember, and certainly he had reason enough to remember you, has been shot, and invalided home. Worse, still is that Stephen has died. I will not trouble you with the details, but it is surely enough to say that he died next to me, and no man, not I, heard or saw the bullet that killed him, and I have no illusions left that anyone can die well, or that death comes fated, or that death is something of which sense can be made. Some days I wake up and forget that it has happened, and have the fun of remembering Stephen’s death all over again, and the pain of wishing I could rewrite history to have him stand one foot to the right, or the left, or crouched down or anywhere but where he was, and knowing that for all my wishing I cannot make it so. You will say that I should know this already, and you would be right, and it is the wish of a child, and you’d probably be not wrong about that either. Shooting the rabbits at home, and I do not say this to disparage your skills, for God knows you have as good an aim as I, after all the years of practice we spent together, and yes, I will not tell your uncle still, shooting the rabbits is entirely different to shooting a man.   
This is not something appropriate to write to you about, and my mother would have words if she knew, so I shall stop. The next letter, God willing, I will write to you of the beauties of the desert, and the heat of the midday sun and the japes that we fellows get up to, of what scrapes Charles gets into, instead of this morose matter from a fellow hanging on by his teeth and nails to life in the hope that it will get better. It can’t get much worse. Here, Charles has found himself a name for drinking more than he ought, which takes some doing here amongst the rocks where every man in the army drinks when he can get it. He also has a reputation for needing his father to keep him from blundering out into the open, and getting himself killed, although some regard him as brave, and a figurehead, and a lucky charm, and won’t go out unless he goes first, although I cannot think it sensible. I have found myself a reputation as being the jester of the squadron, the one who keeps everyone from melancholy, and I hope that this is something of which you can be proud, that I am turning the mischievous spirit that has so often vexed you, into something that does good.  
Yours  
Ben


	17. December 1915, evacuation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's over too late and too soon for Jack

They’ve muffled their boots with dead men’s shirts. Eaten the last of their provisions, the bully meat and biscuits, the water that’s plagued them with dysentery. They’ve established a pattern of firing on the hour at the distant Turks, on the hour every hour, just to keep their attention, while the most of them made their way to the beach. Some clever chap suggested, and for once the officers listened, to rig the rifles, so that water drips into a pan, which fills and triggers them to fire once full, and they stand waiting, ready to fire on the hour, and then as they fire, the last of them will be gone.  
One batch of New Zealanders has left, and the Australians are next. He’s guessing the British have gone, and the Indian chaps with them.  
The beach is full. For once, the beach is safe from firing, and Jack remembers the dips, dulling the lice and stench under the threat of the guns, the shrapnel, the extra brightness of the water, the chill, knowing that this swim could be the last, making it very dear. This is not time for swimming now, and they board the boats, that sit perilously close to the water, swollen with soldiers, silent under penalty of court martial, ready to leave.   
Jack is more than ready to leave. He’s seen too much. He hasn’t seen his father, nor any man that he knows from home. Although he’s tried not to, he’s asked about the 11th Light Horse, but they’ve left already, and Smith’s too common a name to ask about, and Baumgartner too German. So his family and friends still exist in theory, and that’s where he leaves it.   
They sleep like the dead on the transport, the relief of leaving the Gallipoli peninsula behind is so real a thing it’s almost visible. There’s more than one wet eye Jack notes as he climbs into the bunk, aching for sleep, and safety. He’s late to wake, and is roused out by the officers, you’re in the army now, my black boy, no time for your lazy antics. His squad mates wait in silence, and, as he falls in, and the officers turn away, tell him not to bother with the stuffed shirt Englishmen. He’d be moved, if he had any emotion left, but he’s too tired.


	18. 10 January 1916, France, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen faces a moment

We are safe, now, for now. The line was a little too close for a while there. I found myself putting bedpans, as clean as I could make them in the moments before the shelling, on patients’ heads, whether it would help or no, and for myself, once out of sight of the poor dears who could not be moved, under a table, for all the good that would do me. We then did the moonlight flight, and I carried, or helped to carry, those who could be moved, to cars, and trucks, and equipment, and bandages, and all that we had in the way of provisions, and we have set up camp further away from the line.   
I must tell you though, so I do not forget, of the moments between. There was a German patrol, do you see, ahead of the line, and it being night, they seeking an advantage not held during the day, and I do not know where our soldiers were, but our little French village was put to task, with Clementine and I hiding behind the door of a church, on our way back to the hospital tents to retrieve bandages and morpha. We could see them rousing out the inhabitants, and questioning, and very clearly we could see their guns, and if I had not been with Clementine, and her holding my hand, I do not know what I would have done. It may have been that I would have carried it off, as we were in plain clothes, without our nurses’ uniform, and so on, it being the middle of the night, and both with passable French, but it may have been that I would not, and then that would have been the end of me, here in the cold with so many others who have died. I am not ready for death. Not now.  
Clementine held my hand, and held my face to hers, and warmed me with her breath, and her body, and gave me her strength, and truly, the Gwen who returned, once it was safe to do so, was not the same Gwen who had left the camp, and I know myself now where I did not before. It seems foolish to be so happy, in the midst of such horror, and I find myself glorying in the memory of it, when even in the next moment I plunge deep into melancholy, as the guns boom on, and the world seems so hopeless. I know she feels the same way. I cannot imagine now how I thought myself in love with Charles. How I expected to live my life with him, imagining him the white knight that would whisk me away to the romance countries, and live life as in a fairy tale. Honestly, I cannot. Since I write only for myself here, I can honestly say that one of Clem’s kisses transports me beyond all the wet lipped tonguing that Charles bestowed on me, and how I thought myself content, I do not know. I thank God for Clementine. I hope I have enough in me to return her affection with some degree of charm and sophistication, for I feel like a hungry man at a feast, all appetite and no restraint, that is, when we are alone. Which is so seldom. At any minute, the Germans may return. Or the shelling may come our way. I expect that the danger is adding to the way in which I crave for her, but I find I do not care.


	19. 14 February 1916, France, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is too cold to think

I have preserved a flower here, to remember today.  
Some memories I wish would fade sooner. This is the second move in two weeks, and the cold will not break. My hands feel blistered from it. As well as the wounded, we have now a continual stream of those too ill to fight, English as well as our poor Australian and New Zealand brothers, who surely have never had to work in this cold. It is fearful how they pick up to hear my voice, how very homesick they are. I talk to them, during the shift, of our Darling Downs, and the sunsets, and the wattle, the smell of the hay in summer, so longed for, and they do their best to not cry in front of me, but I can see it helps. France is a long way away for these poor men. They cough, and sputter, as best they might to get the mucus up, and I hold them upright as best I can while they do so, and the worst have fevers that we cannot break, and when pressed, admit that they feel as cold as a brick of ice, and there’s not much we can do, if we cannot have them sent to Blighty. It makes me feel weak to think of it, the poor boys. It’s snowed, too, and for every chap we have inside in a warm bed, there are hundreds sleeping out rough, being shelled and shot out, and doing their best to give as good as they get.  
For we are still being shelled. It seems sometimes that we’re being targeted, which is very wrong. Surely there should be some compassion in war, to allow treatment of the wounded. There should be. Yet two nights ago, I woke to find a mortar in the bed but one next to me, luckily unoccupied at the time. It was all we could do to remove it without it carrying out its designated mission.  
Clementine bears it all wonderfully well. She is more used to the cold than I, as her home is but a short hop over the Channel, and she has promised to take me there when the war ends, whenever that is. I cannot wait. We are two to a bed at the moment, and I am glad of it, as it gives me an excuse to put my arms around her, for her to coil her feet around mine, and she has terribly cold feet, but I do not mind, I do not mind one bit at all, except that it is hard to be quiet sometimes when we are together, or remember where we are, with how happy I am. That is, until we emerge from bed, and face the cold, and try to sweep back the tide for another day.


	20. March 1916, France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The country's different for Jack, and so's the fighting.

England is cold, and grey, and the camp that they were in muddy and bleak. None of your ‘green and pleasant lands’ here, and the drill sergeants know how to turn on the evil and they do. Pointless marches in the middle of the night, heavy packs and exercises in the mud, and then inspections where pay’ docked and punishment awarded for mud on your boots. Because he’s good with his hands, he’s assigned to the artillery. At least there are horses in the artillery, and he’s given the rank of driver, Driver Jack Smith is his new title, and there are horses again in his life, even if they’re attached to guns, they’re still alive, and well and something to care for. He finds a knot in his stomach developing, with the waiting.   
It’s a relief when they’re shipped across the Channel, even with the look out for U-Boats. A slower form of going over the top. The march across France is almost pleasant. No one is shooting at him. He sleeps on a straw bed, instead of the ground, and there are early daffodils, and he is in France, rather than in a country where he is the enemy. He feels better for this.   
He’s no doubt that it’s going to get worse, much worse. They’ve seen the columns of soldiers marching back from the front, and they look like how he felt after Gallipoli. For the moment, though, they’re stationed where they are back from the front, for long range action with the guns. There’s no-one in his immediate squad he knows from before, and he feels like he’s lucked into a new family of equals, no one’s a raw boned recruit, no one’s old mates from before, everyone’s new, and no one’s better than any one else. There’s a big fella, with a fresh scar over one eye, who was at Gallipoli too, Blinky, who doesn’t talk over much, and a little bloke who’s quick on his feet, who’s been around the traps in France, called Giant, and a ginger called Blue who comes from Victoria, and he’s given 21 as a moniker, after he takes some dosh off the next squad. Blue’s the one with the big guns experience, and Blinky’s last crew was killed by a shell, and Jack gathers his primary role will be to hold the horses and load the munitions. Which is fine. He’s shot enough people already.   
The girls of France are also happy to see them. Very happy. A girl runs up and kisses him, kisses all the fellows, as they march through her village, and it’s delightful, the feeling of the soft lips on his rough cheek, it feels like something from a dream, and she’s prettier than Susie, the stationmaster’s daughter, but just as accommodating, when he swings her up and kisses her back. In the town where they bivouac, the girls are more than happy to see them too, and the dosh gets put to good use, with French wine, and a bit of the other, with appropriate precautions, after what happened to his company in Alexandria, after the mud of Gallipoli and the restraints were let lose, he’s no desire to be treated for anything at all if he can help it. There are daffodils, and there is green grass, and he’s more hopeful that he’ll make it through, as he bunks down into soft clean straw, and looks up at stars through the holes in the roof of the barn in which they’re dossed.


	21. March 1916, the Middle East

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben become an uncle, and thinks about family

Dear Mutti  
Thank you for the telegraph to Wilhelm, he was more than delighted to hear that he is a father, and I am beyond reason happy to be an uncle to the newest Baumgartner. A nephew is something to be celebrated, and I wish we were both home to see his face. I know that Wilhelm has written to Margaret, but please congratulate her most heartily for me, and I will try to find something here that makes an appropriate baby toy, although I do not know how old he will be when we return.  
For I am in Egypt now, and there are in fact camels, and date palms, and the Pyramids are real. Here is a photo of myself, Wilhelm and the squadron, and do not ask how much the expense. You will see we are keeping well, if not eating quite as heartily as at your good table.  
I think you would like the pickles here. Of course, back in the field, we do not have this luxury, but there are pickled chillis that you would relish, and the flavours of the meat, when we can get it, are most interesting. Warm, and brown.   
We have finally been reunited with our horses, and are out of the trenches, and into the heat. It’s dry and sandy everywhere, and yet people are growing vegetables somewhere, and there must be barley and wheat fields, for we have bread, it is a mystery.   
Our horses are most pleased to see us too, I think they have found it a bit dull, and they can certainly not complain of this now. We treated them to a swim in the surf, or a splash, rather, and my Spike whinnied like anything.   
We found a German settlement here, funnily enough, five families, but the women and children only, with their chickens and their goats, and their faces seemed awfully familiar, terribly close to the one I look at when I shave. Still, they have picked the wrong side, and we do not trust them here at all, for fear that they will alert their army, and their army, and their air force have no compunction about targeting us and our horses, as you can imagine. After I explained to the Major what they were saying, the fellows looked funnily at me, and at Wilhelm, and next time you write, please do so with less German. Our commander (above the Major) has told us that very many here have been settled by the Turks, displacing the locals, and so everyone here is from somewhere else, and we are to trust no one, but especially not the Germans. You can imagine how Wilhelm and I felt after that. I find myself going to great lengths to play the clown, so that the fellows forget, even if I do not, my background. It must be harder to hate a fellow who makes you laugh. Wilhelm, as always, wins people over instead by his earnest nature, and thorough attention to detail. I do not think there is a lad in the regiment he has not helped in one way or another. Laughter and kindness, and there are your two sons in a nutshell.  
We have heard rumours that we are for the land of the Bible soon. Only time will tell.  
Your son  
Ben


	22. April 1916, Armentieres

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack finds that family is what you make of it. That and barley soup

He’d been marching the horses along the road, dragging the guns, when the idea of France turned on him. The horses had whinnied, and there’d been no reason why that he could see, nothing to startle them, and he’d turned to say as much to Giant, when the little man had put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and dropped like a bag of sand, and blood on his forehead, and nothing looking out of his eyes, a stray bullet from some fight close by or far away. He’d checked for snipers, and Blinky hissed at him to move on, move out, get safe, and there’d been nothing, no one that he could see, just Giant was gone. They’d taken his identity disc, and moved him to the side of the road, and that’d been it for Giant, and them a man down for the moment.  
Blue wouldn’t stop talking about it the rest of the day, how strange, how random, how fleeting is life, and Jack’d wanted him to stop, and couldn’t say it, so he stole barley from the fields as they’d passed, to take the noise of it out. The swish of the grass made him homesick. He chewed it as they passed, the nutty flavour dulling the feeling. For of course, Blue was right, and it could have been him, any of the last year and a half, and it hadn’t been.   
That night, he made barley soup in his army issue helmet, the next troop laughing to see him do it, until he and Blue and Blinky had soup, and warm bellies, and they didn’t. Slept through that night, and when he woke, Blinky and Blue were cuddled around each other like a pair of cats.  
The next day, they reached the front. There’d been noise, intensifying, throughout the morning, the sounds of guns resonating in his chest, in the ground, and he’d looked to the two lead horses, Jim and Bob, to see them unmoved, veterans both, and the two hind, Blake and Hammer, and only Hammer twitching at the sound. Maisie and Bell in the middle continued, placid, following the lead.   
The artillery crew they were relieving looked haggard, wrinkles around the eyes, and twitching more than the horses. Blue took the co-ordinates, the angles from the littlest man on their crew, and that was that. The duty was theirs.  
It took them less time than in training to assemble and load. This to the backdrop of rifle and small arms fire, the infantry up ahead somewhere having it out with the Germans at close quarters, and the sounding of shells further down the line. The knowledge that until the gun’s fired, the Germans won’t be able to zero in on their location weighs heavily on Jack, and he wants to hold it off as long as he can. He can’t hold off, because every second they delay is longer that their infantry must hold without cover, and safety should be a gunner’s third concern, after his gun and his duty, his drill teacher’s said.  
The gun is made ready, and the crew in position, and the gun is fired, and they watch, ashamed, as the shell explodes behind their own troops. Blinky curses a blue streak at Giant for being dead, and at Blue for having less sense than a rabbit, and checks the angles again, and they adjust, and Jack stays silent as again, they fire, and this time the aim’s true, and they can see the trees shatter beyond the position of their lines, and hopefully in the midst of the Germans, and they wait for the smoke to clear to adjust.   
The wood of the gun carriage is rough under his fingers, and he grips it firmly. Waiting.   
There’s a whistle in the air, and the ground shakes behind him, and there’s dirt flung about his ears, but now they have some calculations of their own to run. They adjust the gun, slightly up, slightly to the right. Blinky looks again, and they load, hoping that the process has taken less time than the German gunners have taken, and they fire again. The carriage shakes.  
This time, the whistle in the air seems faster, sharper, with teeth, and the hit is in front, and the dirt is flung back in his face. Blinky adjusts the gun down slightly, muttering to himself as he does, and Jack stands at the ready, waiting for the signal. They load. They fire, and this time, there’s no further whistle.   
A gunner crew is dead, and he shouldn’t feel this triumphant, but he does.   
He waits, as Blinky adjusts again.


	23. May 1916, Alexandria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridgid finds that some aspects of nursing are more unexpected than others.

The veil head covering, and long skirts are no one’s object of curiosity here, with plenty in long robes, and head coverings of their own, she observes on the infrequent outings she’s permitted. Bridgid’s assigned to a private hospital for now, what had been a private hotel, with tiles, and taps, and the remnants, but only the remnants of luxury. She has a whole bed to herself, in a room that sleeps six women, and she feels very much a cosmopolitan traveller, until at night, when the dreams come. In her dreams, she is back on the ship, and the bodies keep coming, and the soldiers continue to die, in the horrible ways she’s seen, with blood loss, and gangrene, and choking on their own vomit, and in the throes of dysentery, and she tries not to dream. In her dreams, she’s bleeding from the gut, like so many for whom she’s stood the death watch, held the hands until the hands let go, and the pain is everywhere.   
The duties here are lighter. The troops are still fighting, but not as desperately, and not at Gallipoli, with the odds stacked so highly against them. The wounded that reach them can, and are, generally saved. Invalided home to Blighty, or further, where the wounds are too great, but in the main, packed back to the front. Anyone with a slouch hat, and an emu feather, is asked for news. The Baumgartner boys are still alive, when she asks one Alex Birdsall from Townsville, and she kisses the patient on the cheek impulsively, and is placed on restrictions, no town for her. The hotel is roomy enough that she does not care, the crowds are oppressive in the heat of the day, and the rooftop, where she’s not meant to be either, gives her a view over the city’s expanse, or a fair width of it. There’s an abundance of white and yellow bricking, and cats who come to visit, and palm trees, actual palm trees like the ones in the illustrated bible, and the sights are glorious, even at a distance, and she’s in the town where once was the famous library, of which she’s read. She should be happy.  
The duties here are lighter, but sometimes more disquieting. It appears that relieved from death, soldiers view a good time as a good feed, and then a good trip for a couple of hours to the brothels. With so many of that mind, a significant number of patients in Alexandria are no longer patients who have suffered wounds from war, but wounds from love, as one of the doctors in a more romantic mood puts it. Syphilis. Gonorrhoea. The clap, the dose, the lover’s malady, many names, but all of them mean that soldiers appear, holding their most private parts, and demanding attention from any medical staff who will take them. She’s seen more than she should have of men she’s not married to, and wishes she hadn’t.  
She’s remembering the time that Frau Baumgartner lectured her classmates on anatomy, and the basics of reproduction, and the giggles and jokes at Ben and Wilhelm’s expense, and the way Ben had coloured up red, when she’d asked him what else he knew. No smart answer that time. Frau hadn’t provided this part of the education, and she can understand why. She never wants to see or talk about another diseased penis, ever again. The doctors, though, think it the height of humour to reconstruct the circumstances, describe symptoms with reference to custard, and jam, and all manner of edibles, such that even if there had been custard or jam, or any great supply of food to eat, she would not have been tempted. She’s told to not be such a prude, by one of the doctors, and by another, that this is simply what men do to relieve stress, and when they’re posted out to Palestine, they won’t be so rowdy, nor so tempted. The same doctor then tries to kiss her, on the tea break when there’s no one else in the little room, a picture of an odalisque on the wall, and she lets him, just to see, and his hard teeth clashing on hers, and a tongue like a piece of liver, and no fireworks, no shivering, just wet, is no comparison at all, and she makes her escape as quickly as she can. It’s impolitic to slap people who can have you sent home. She’s not ready to go home quite yet. Spring is coming in the wind, and if the ANZACS are headed to Palestine, then her duties are not over.


	24. June 1916, France, Gwen Jones diary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen finds herself suffused with conviction. Unfortunately.

There are masses of flowers when I have time to see them. Beds of pansies and suffusions of narcissi, and poppies, oh the poppies, bursting out of their furry shells, and never will they go back in.   
We’ve worn the gas masks now, as clouds drift where the wind blows and doesn’t care that we are not soldiers. It’s hard to see the poor boys in their beds scramble for them, the coughing is awful for those who cannot use their arms, and we cannot be everywhere at once. Patients have died. No, not patients, men for whom I have wiped their face, and changed their bed clothes, and bandages, and hoped for their recovery, and they have died nonetheless, and nothing I have done has changed that fact.  
Fritz has sent his tinned fish too close to our tents more than once, despite the red crosses on top, which surely would be visible to any aviator. Unfeeling beasts, to be targeting the wounded. Not that it’s any better, I confide to you my diary only, to be targeting the hale and healthy, at such a distance, where they cannot see the results of their actions, and there’s no chance for the wounded to fight back. Not sporting at all. Clementine tells me that we do the same when we have a chance, and she is likely right, but I cannot believe that any Australian would target a hospital tent.   
We had a quarrel over it, actually. She has a cousin in a plane, or likely had a cousin in a plane, and views him as quite the defender and will not hear me talk of fair, or sportmanlike, and that all is fair in war. I cannot quite come at that myself. I feel the advantage is all to the aviator.   
We agreed to disagree, and she kissed me, and told me I was her dear Gwen, and that Australia is different after all. I think that she misunderstands me entirely and deliberately, that sometimes she thinks of me as simpler, younger, more in need of protection from the evils of the world. She is quite wrong in this. If ever I need to attack, or defend myself, I would want to do so in person, and not through such a distracted, distanced means. I know now only too well the evils of the world, and she does me no favours in trying to shield me from them. If I am to die, I would want to see the bullet coming, not to have the death from above, from the blue sky with no warning. To face death head on, since I have chosen to be here, and not remain in Australia, far removed from all of this suffering. Tonight we sleep in separate beds and I have taken care to ensure that my shifts are different from hers, for I need space, and time, to allow this anger to pass. I am quite certain that half of this is the fact that I am tired, and hungry, and saddened by the way in which every day, every single day, we have had to mark off a soldier, and strip his bed, and remove his body. The other half is the one with which I must engage. I have never fought with someone I love before, not my parents nor Bridgid either. I do not know quite how to go about it, but I am willing to learn if she is. In the meantime, the flowers continue to bloom, for they do not care whether there is abundant death or life, nor whether I am happy or angry or sad. Here is a poppy, and if it does not keep, its colour will stain the page, and I will remember.


	25. July 1916, Egypt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has his horse again, and is better for it

Dear Bridgid  
I write to you in memory of a missing nose, and a firm paw.   
Yes, old girl, I’ve visited the sphinx, and she is magnificent. I attach a photograph of your fate worse than death, and the other lads in the squadron, to remember us by, but principally because I know you want to see the real thing.   
She is magnificent, but better looked at from further back, than up close, where it’s hard to tell her features from a sandstone wall. The Pyramids loom over the whole thing, like a disapproving aunt,, and they continue to loom over you even when you’ve left the district. It took us a good little while to go around the whole of them, and some of the lads wanted to carve their initials at the base, which the local fellows didn’t like too much, I can tell you.  
We are finally back with our horse counterparts. They’re a little thinner than they have been, but they’re happy enough to be back and doing their part. It is certainly a change from standing in a trench all day and night and occasionally firing a couple of rounds, to be galloping through the hot hail of them. I leapt over a trench, in our last engagement, to find that it was still populated by the enemy, and had a fine time to dodge their efforts, once they wheeled around, I can tell you that too. They stab up with their bayonets, to try to reach the bellies of our neddies, and we leap down to find them for it, and then it’s every man for himself, in close quarters. I find that I cannot remove from my thoughts the face of one in particular, who was not as fast as I, and although Crown and country command me, I am certain he fought for no less lofty an ideal, and is dead at my hands for all that.  
Some days, we hold still as rabbits under the hunter’s eyes, and hold our horses still in the scrub, as the German taubes scrape the air with their screeching. For if they spot us, there is not much can save us except luck, as our air support is thin and the ground it covers too large, and the eggs those German birds lay have taken out whole strings of horses, not to mention their riders. Sleep in the desert is not any more safe than sleep in the trenches, for us, or our horses. We tether them to buried sand bags while we sleep in shifts, and hope that the enemy’s aircraft are not out spotting. Our friends in the nth Brigade were unlucky in this, and a little Vocker caught them napping, dropping its unwelcome presents right in the midst of the strings of horses, although some chaps managed to ride for the scrub like billy-o, and were preserved. When I’m home, I mean to lie in my bed for a week, never minding the flies, or the shouting of my mother, or you for that matter.   
I will never complain of the heat, either, when I’m returned. It’s harder on old Spike, my horse, than me, I fear. I had no water for him for over a day, in the cruel heat, hotter than any of our summers, I’d wager, and his soft mouth snickering back at me, to find me just as dry as he was. We had to hold the horses back so that each could have their turn, once we finally came upon the well, foul and fetid that it was. Spike was not happy, not until I let him drink out of my hat. You would want to ride him yourself, I’m certain. He’s a fine horse, just shy of fifteen hands, from good waler stock, brown as a nut, and with a twitching tail for the flies, steady enough when we have to race for it, even when there’s action happening, and a skipping gait when we’re on hard enough surface that tells me he’s enjoying it as much as I am. For I am, I have to say, in amongst it all. It beats the pants off standing in a trench and waiting to get shot by someone equally as twitchy and bored as yourself.   
Some days, when we reach the well, the Turks are there already, or the Bedouins, who trade information like barter goods, and will tell the Turks soon enough. The Turks have fixed guns that they bring across the desert, and it is an awful thing to feel them zeroing in on your position, knowing that if you ride forward, you will be in their rifle range, which is longer than ours, and if you ride back, you will be ceding ground, which is against the grain, and against the orders. So far we have been lucky. When we ride through towns where there has already been fighting, the bodies have been covered by sand and dust.  
It is a funny thing, for we go out and risk our neck to find wood for our fires, and know that the best place for it is near the abandoned village, but the Turks know this too, and sometimes lay in wait, with rifles concealed in the prickly pear walls, or the windows of the houses, and a man dies for wood for dinner, as we ride with our hands to our neddy’s necks, urging them on and faster, until we get back to our scrabble hollow in in the sand. The worst is that the riding is still as fun as ever, even with the bullets flying at your back, and knowing you may not make it back to your home, your loved ones. Perhaps it makes it more fun, but I feel truly myself when I ride like that, although better when riding into the fray, as you would expect. Some nights we do not have fires.  
It’s certainly been an education in what I didn’t know I had, until I missed it. I miss you more than I can say. Yours, although you would require that I be well bathed before I arrive at your front door to knock, and then I would kiss you again, and you would tell me that my beard tickles your neck, and that I should shave. For I have a beard now, you see, as we are out of the trenches and into the desert, and the lice are fewer.  
Yours  
Ben


	26. August 1916, Mouquet Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not even family helps, sometimes

The gas mask stifles even as he breathes. The chlorine burns at his wrists, where his jacket has shrunk away from his gloves, and he’s so hot that the sweat drips into it, stinging. The fields that he saw in the distance, before the attack, where Blinky has them aiming, are unburnt, and it seems a joke that they can thrive in the poison. They’ve seen the infantry suffer enough, and tested the theory that the shells will cause the gas to dissipate, and it does not, and they’ve stopped, and the infantry call them lazy for not trying. So here they are, continuing on through the attack, trying to see through the masks, and with no idea if they are zeroing in, or zeroing out, for the goggles are thick.   
The gas burns at his ankles too. The move to Pozieres last month was so swift that he had to come away without calling for his clothes from the widow washerwoman, and he has only those that he wears, and he had worn through these socks already. There is now no more Pozieres to speak of. What they didn’t destroy, the Germans did, acting as if to blot them out, piece by piece, tree by tree, house by house.  
There is nothing but the mud now, the ground is flat, but for the trenches, and everyone is brown, and no officer tells them to shine their shoes any more. He’d heard from Blue that one of the German trenches the AIF had taken had wallpaper and carpets. A billiard table. A piano. A dining table. None of that is visible now. The gun is stuck in the mud, and where the gas isn’t burning, is covered with the mud. He’s dreading the call for more munitions, when he’ll have to stumble back to the cart and fill his arms with the heavy shells, and lift his feet through the sludge back again. It’s rained, again, and his boots are leaking, and the mud feels like leeches, like slugs, like the slime of death that it is. There’s no cessation in the shelling from the German lines, they are desperate, Blinky says, to take back the ground they’ve lost, and he can see no end to the mud.  
One division of infantry’s been relieved already, those that do not lie still in the mud in the in between land, and the faces of the soldiers who pass them by are dead, still, seeing something that isn’t there. The soldiers marching the other way tell him to keep it up, give the kraut the one two. The ground continues to shake. They keep at it.


	27. October 1916, France, Gwen Jones’ diary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen shakes

Even as I write this, my hands are shaking, I have to focus to keep the page still. I can still hear the shelling from last night in my head, the whistle of the sound through the air and the tearing rip of the earth, and the shake, and my hands shake. I see it in the patients too, the eyes that are too wide, and the hands that hold tight to the blankets, for the ones who have hands still.  
The cold is coming in at night now, even with Clementine’s warmth, and she holds me until I sleep, but who is holding her? I cannot do my work when I think of it. So I do not think. I continue on. I hold bandages, and I wipe up blood, and bile, and vomit, and urine, and most importantly, I smile at the patients, even when I’m ushering them out of this world, even when I’m wrestling their bodies under the beds for the faint protection that will give, if one of those screamers does hit. Clementine doesn’t bother anymore, she’s even gone outside to look at the sky during some of the waves. It’s like she wants to die. I do not want to die. I want my hands to stop shaking.


	28. Christmas 1916, the desert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a better Christmas, but it's still not home

Dear Mutti  
The desert makes a marginally better place to spend a Christmas than the trenches, certainly in smell, and in the sounds, and the sights but I do recall the war was to be over this time last year, so I am not entirely happy with my whereabouts. I should be home with you.  
It is interesting to think, though, that the scene that first Christmas must have been somewhat similar to this, surely, in appearance, although with less fighting perhaps. There are trees here, and small towns, and animal sheds not dissimilar to our own, though ours are better kept, for want of a war. Our padre tells us of the history of where we are, but if I tell you where, then my letter will be censored, and you will be none the wiser.  
Charles has eased on his drinking, but now carries on as if he were one of the British officers, riding out in front of the troops, and I do not know how he is lucky enough not to be shot, for he has had close calls enough. There is a British officer, who dresses as an Arab and who works in intelligence, that I think he is modelling himself on, Charles thinks him quite the smart dashing fellow, and I suspect that it will not be long before Charles asks to dress likewise, if he could but have his way, although I doubt it not that his father will not allow it. The Major still insists on shined buckles, and neat clothes, when we have the means of doing it. Myself, I think it more important to be warm, and focus on collecting wood for fires for us and the horses.   
I think of home often at present, and hope that my nephew is finding his first Christmas to his liking. His father, you will be pleased to hear, carries on as fine a son as you could wish for, not stinting in courage, or in sense and you would be very proud of him. Myself, I am very grateful for his fine example. He’s always the one who has the finest suggestions, of our little squad, and I think it will not be too much longer before I write to you with news of his promotion. I am content to do my part as part of the team, as I always have done, and I hope that makes you proud enough, for surely when you have two fine sons, one must be better than the other, and I am happy to acknowledge that Wilhelm is that one.  
I trust that when I do come home, you will use your fine motherly influence to find your second son a good posting not too far from home. I would not want to be far from my brother, I think. I feel as if I know him much better now than ever I did before we came away, and for that, at least, I thank the war.   
Your son  
Benjamin


	29. January, 1917, Wiltshire, Gwen Jones’ diary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen finds that she has fallen for an heiress, after all

I hardly know what to make of myself. One moment, I was shaking, and shivering, and fever laden in a place in France that no longer exists, a mere dot on the map, a name without a house to it, and then next, here I find myself in the bosom of my dear one’s family, with fresh eggs, and warm food, and beds, and everything good, except for my Clementine, who soldiers on, healthy and hale back in nameless France.   
It transpires my Clementine is rich, for her house is easily twice the size of the Smiths grand one at home, with rooms, and separate houses for servants, all away at the war at present, with a greenhouse full of tropical orchids, and citrus trees, thriving despite the cold, even as the early daffodil spike shoot their green leaves up into the snow and wither away. The house is old, although they say it is not, only built in the 1700s, and I say that was before Queensland was settled, and they laugh, and tell me I’m funny, although I meant it in seriousness. I am in my dear one’s room, with such a carpet, rich and red, although worn down no doubt since the 1700s, and a bed you could imagine a King sleeping in, full dark wood posts, and such warm blankets that I am quite sure my illness will be gone in no time. I have not touched on her parents, who are the sweetest souls. Her father inquires as to my health, and presses books, and paintbrushes, and needlepoint upon me, as if I could be bored, and her mother sits and takes tea with me as if I were some grand lady. Clementine did not tell me, but they are titled, so I am quite in awe when I think of it, which I try not to, and they have or had one son, killed earlier in the war, her brother Randolph, so that she is all that they have left, and they speak so often of her, and with such affection. So solicitous of my health! I have soft boiled eggs, and soup with carrots and fresh vegetables, and chicken meat, cut finely as if I were an invalid lacking a jaw, although all I am is ill. I cannot think when I last ate so well.   
I do find myself missing my parents, although they would surely have a rougher approach to my health, and I would be no doubt told to hop out of bed, and not dwell on my illness, and let the power of positive thinking heal me. I cannot find it in me to miss the Downs, and my own little bed, and bedroom shared with Bridgid in the midst of this luxury. I do wonder where Bridgid is, and whether she has fared any better than me. I cannot think of our soldiers, having seen what I have seen. It is better to imagine them dead, than still suffering through this.   
If I am better next week, I will return to France and Clementine’s side where I belong, where I will quite tease Clementine for being such a dark horse.


	30. March, 1917, France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack earns a Blighty pass and finds it not to be the paradise he expected

There’d been a point in the snow when he’d looked around, at the campfire with the Queensland patriotic fund package treasures boiling away, corned beef, and turnips, and jam, and tinned pudding, when he’d looked at the horses, sheltered somewhat from the cold, and the reflected heat of the fire, and at his mates, and thought, you know what, I’m happy. I’m having a good day. The snow melted away from the fire, and Blue told a story of his home town, and the girl he’d left behind and the terrible socks she’d knitted him before he left, and how she’d not written, and he couldn’t remember her face, and Jack thought of the Downs, and the grass that rippled on forever, and the kites that wheeled in the sky, and the homesickness took him down into the mud, like porridge, and the snow bit.  
It must have been at that point that the flu struck, because in November, he didn’t have a cough, and by new year’s day, he couldn’t speak, and his ribs ached, and his throat caught at every breath, as if there were razor blades stuck mid swallow. His hands never warmed, and the gloves always stayed sodden, and once he caught a finger in loading, and it bruised, and he didn’t notice until after. The fingernail died. Blue told him to put a sock in it, often, so he could sleep, the times that they were off duty, which were few enough, and he couldn’t. He’s been a sandwich in the Blue and Blinky bread and he could feel with each cough, them shaking awake, and so he turns it down, no matter how welcome the warmth.   
The horses didn’t mind. Their flanks warmed him, as he combed them down, and Hammer tried to bury his head into Jack’s chest, hiding his ears back against the sound of the too close guns, shaking the ground even here, at the fall back point. The soft nostrils blew warm air down into his shirt, and Jack awkwardly stroked his neck, stiff fingered, until the horse pulled back.  
The subsequent coughing fit had him doubled over, and retching up bile, and when he stood again, spots danced in the air, little spots of light that darted away when he tried to look at them, and he’d grabbed for the horse’s neck as his feet fell away from under him.   
He remembers little of the trip back to Blighty, only that the nurses had more strength than he did, and pushed him down with one finger when he tried to get up, argued that he wasn’t sick, and that there’d been blood when he coughed. Pneumonia, one had said. Stupid man, the other.  
The hospital was frighteningly white, almost ridiculously clean. He’d seen his hands, dirt, and blood under the fingernails, and up his arms, disappearing away under the sheets, and felt ashamed. He had no wound to speak of, and Blinky and Blue would be needing to break in some new hand to the particular ways of their crew, and here he was safe, and warm, and in England. In England!   
He’d been allowed up, after a week, and to shuffle around the wards, and after the second, when the cough eased, to walk the grounds, the clean, green, daffodil laced grounds, with the promise of more bulbs to come up. The final week of his leave, he’d been allowed to take the train, with another convalescent, into London. The train was full, women and men, and men of fighting age too, and the women looked him and his uniform up and down with interest, and the men with begrudging almost admiration, until he coughed again, and then they turned away.  
The streets were bulging with people passing in every which way, no order to it, no left or right stream passing, but everyone out for themselves, with missions of their own and no care for whose toes might be trampled. His pockets had enough in them for a beer, and a casserole with more sauce than meat. The newspaper boy was shouting the news of Britain’s great success, the routing of the Germans, and the rain started up again. No one made way for him, or for any woman, or for anyone else, and the squeeze to get on to the station was worse than it had been in the trenches. Standing room only in the carriages.  
To top it off, his bed had gone when he finally made it back to the hospital, and they handed him his papers, be at the docks in the morning. He thought, briefly, about investigating whether any of the boats were Australia bound, and then thought better of it. Back to the cold.


	31. March 1917, Alexandria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben writes to Bridgid, for a last time. Probably.

Dear Bridgid  
We are back in town again, and waiting for orders. Waiting is what we’ve done from time to time in the desert, and here’s water for the horses, and food for the men, so over all, it’s not unpleasant. Grapes even, and I recall you throwing them at me in your garden to be, insisting I stay still and silent, and make a target of my mouth, although not in the way I was hoping for. That was a good day, never mind that you hit your thumb with the hammer, and I missed my foot by inches with the saw. I’m much better at throwing knives now, having had more practice than you.  
The local fellows are not unwelcoming. The people are friendly, almost too friendly, and our chaps are finding it hard not to relax, now we are stationed here, and we are not being shot at continually. There are some houses of ill repute, where several of the chaps, who I will not name, but which do not include Wilhelm or myself, have had their wallets stolen. There was somewhat of a fight, and of course, the rule is one in all in, so I can now say that I have seen the inside of such a place, with my honour intact, and have had more of an education in how the world works than I wanted.  
[Insert] is certainly a city of multitudes. I thought, in fact, that I saw you walking the streets, in the dress of a nurse, but I am certain that my foolish brain is playing tricks on me. After all, we saw creatures of the brain enough in the desert, when we lacked water and food, and you are on my mind often enough, when it’s not busy with the business of staying alive, so it is not surprising that I think I see you in the streets.  
I do often wonder what you are doing, at home. Whether the house we laboured over for so long has been finished, and you have found a sensible fellow who stayed behind and did not take himself to the other side of the world to share it with you. Or whether your uncle has rethought the situation, all things being as they are, and decided to give you time to prove that you can run it by yourself.  
I’m writing with a terrible clarity here of a man in love, who has not seen his sweetheart for two years, nor heard from you either. Make no mistake in this, I want more than anything to be married to you when I return home, if you will have me. I want no man but me to be nailing the shingle to that roof. Or, for that matter, to bear the sharp edge of your tongue, to be the one to drive you mad. Let me be plain and forthright for once in my life or you will call me coward, I love you, every bit of you from your teasing eyes to your sharp tongue and down to the soles of your sensible shoes. My mother always says for every pot there is a lid, and I’m not certain of us which is which, but in my view, whichever I am, you are the other. Ich werde dich immer lieben. Writing to you makes for the only time in my day when I do not think of the sand in my shoe, my horse with not enough feed or water, Charles’ terrible snore, and the British officer’s orders, devoid from any sense, and the Turks and Bedouins waiting for us to ride into the something nasty they’ve prepared, or the Germans with their little aircrafts and their special presents that can wipe a string of horses into a painful death. When I’m writing to you, I’m at home, our home, working on the roof, or watching you weed the garden, and make the bread, which I will finally admit here on the other side of the world that you do better than me. Thinking of you, and the life that we had, that we could have together, gives me joy like nothing else. Like riding at full gallop.  
However, because I love you so well, I have to be sensible here for you. It has been almost two years since we left. This war was meant to be over more than a year ago. You have not written or telegraphed to me a single time, and I say this not out of a desire to tease, but in sincerity, if this means that you have found yourself content without me, or with some other fellow, then, why, old girl, I will be happy for you. Not now, of course. But when I return. If I return, for that seems unlikely at this stage, with what I have seen.  
So, Bridgid, I ask that if you want me to keep on as I have been, with my eyes turned only to you, and my pen turned only to charm, and not to record the goings on in which I find myself, and with thoughts of what might have been, and what still could be if I survive this beastly thing, write to me and let me know. Silence from you on this subject will silence me forever, as the novels say, and we shall return to being the jostling and jousting competitors of old, if and when I return.  
My hopes are that we shall not.  
Yours, unless you would not like me to be so  
Ben


	32. March 1917, Alexandria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridgid's shopping trip ends badly

The air is rich with spices and promise, now that she actually has an afternoon to herself, a whole afternoon to roam, although in the company, of course, of another nurse. The other person in this instance is a taciturn Welsh woman, Abigail Jones, no relation, who has previously shut Bridgid’s conversational overtures down as if they were German planes, has actually told Bridgid that she’s not interested in being friends, she’s here to help the boys, refuses to laugh, and in Bridgid’s view, should be shipped back to Wales. Despite that. Despite.   
The narrow passageways down to the souk are enticing, like mazes, smells of cinnamon, and cumin, and she wants to explore, she wants to get lost, to forget for the moment the way in which the last chap had coughed himself, bloody mouthed, into a coma, and then stopped breathing, or the one before that lost to dysentery, the death, the blood, the grumbling from the ones who weren’t on the death list, all of it. The fact that the wounds won’t heal in this heat, they seep and fester, and take secondary infections, and there’s not enough powder to treat them all, even now that there’s more time, and more staff to treat the steady flow of wounded. There’s training in new anaesthetic systems being offered now, and training for some of the nurses, not for her, of course, as a voluntary aid reinforcement, but there’s the prospect of helping with the pain, and it frustrates her that she can’t do any of it. All she can do is support it. Given that, she wants to forget. She wants to indulge herself in a daydream of a memory or two, to find adventure for an afternoon in someone else’s life, the life of the souk.   
There’s apple tea being offered, and carpets, and copper pots for which she has no money, and she’s keen to stop and examine everything, but of course, Abigail has her eyes on fresh vegetables down in the markets, and is not interested in anything that doesn’t crunch. Bridgid is as keen on carrots as the next person dining on slop and sludge, but carrots will surely wait, and it’s the adventure she’s asking for, with little luck, for Abigail continues to hold her elbow and guide her on.   
Abigail clucks her tongue and shakes her head, as they pass down a street, with a half open door, and what looks like a group of slouch hatted Australian soldiers thronging about it.   
“Those boys, we’ll see some of them before long with a dose. They should be keeping to themselves, and that’s for certain. Walk on, Bridgid, do.”  
There’s a certain familiarity to one of them, and Bridgid stops for a minute to look. The shoulders are broad enough, and the colour hair is right, brown and curly, and the way in which he’s standing is all too familiar, and if he’d just turn, then she could see the face, see if there’s a quirk to the eyebrow, and an overly knowing twist to the lip.  
Abigail’s hand on her elbow pushes her on, and he turns, and it is him. He has a beard, of sorts, and his hair is long under the hat, but it is him. She’s certain.   
Abigail says, “Don’t make such peculiar noises, you sound as if you’re choking. Stop crushing my hand. Do come along Bridgid, the heat is quite frankly too much, and I don’t care for this smell. If we don’t get on, all the freshest vegetables will be gone.”  
She allows herself to be moved on, because if that’s him, and at that house, then she’s no desire to let him see her. Ever again. The fresh vegetable market smells of rotting cabbage leaves, and apple tea, and sweet ferment, and the bile rises in the back of her throat. Abigail insists to each stallholder that she must examine each carrot, each cucumber, each gourd, and now it is she that will not be moved, like a sulky dog with its paws dug in, and Bridgid who wants to push on. For in the heat of the day, she’s imagining Ben, and a woman whose face she cannot see, but it’s not her own, and he’s moving over her, and in her, and he’s laughing at her, for ever thinking that there was more to a kiss, and a few half promises, which is all they were at best, than there was.   
Abigail passes her one zucchini, and then another, and she holds them, unthinking, until Abigail hisses at her to put them in the bag, which she does, smooth flesh through her fingers, warm in the heat. The next stall, there’s oranges, dimpled and fragrant, and the smell turns her stomach.   
The string bag cuts into her hand, and then her shoulder, but the pain helps centre her thoughts. What does it matter if he’s doing what so many other men do, when there’s no certainty of a life ahead? He’s not hers. He never really was.


	33. June 1917, somewhere in France, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen has lost heart

We hear terrible news from the front, and there are countless wounded coming through every day. The ones who can talk tell us of battlefields of mud stained with red, and sappers digging tunnels through it beneath each other’s trenches, and hills that just cease to be, and towns that are no longer there.  
The shakes are back, and Clementine has them too. We hold each other still, even if we are too tired, too heart sick to do anything more.   
I saw Jack pass through, I think, a team of six horses, pulling a gun, one of the big ones that likely bogs in the mud, that keeps us awake at night, and no doubt keeps German nurses as tired as we are. I waved, but I am certain that I would have been just a face in the crowd, a pretty girl, if I am any longer, cheering the soldiers on. I do not know if he saw me.  
I should write more of the war, of the surroundings, for we are in a bombed out village, which they say is not near the front, but I wonder how they know, for all is mud, with only the few shells of houses, the church to mark the fact that we are in a place where people once lived. The village was, no doubt, pretty and charming once. It is so no longer. There is no roof where we are to shelter, so we are only under canvas, and it rains on and off. It should be warmer soon, we tell each other.   
I see the field ambulances come in from the battles with resignation now. There’s no adrenalin left in me, no fear, I think, anymore. I see the trucks moving the wounded out, who are being invalided to Blighty, and I remember my time in England as if it were a fever dream. Flashes of comfort, of red plush velvet, rich textured under my fingers as if it were Clementine’s hair, of boiled chicken, of even a decent cup of tea. I am not jealous, exactly, of the wounded. No, I am. Although I am hopeful that they will recover, I hope and pray that they do, it is more the respite from the war that I envy. I wonder how much longer it can last. It seems impossible that there are more troops to send, to replace the dead.


	34. October 1917, somewhere in France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Jack knows now is the war, and it's a home, of a sort

There had been a time when Jack followed their peregrinations on the map, up and down the line, marvelling at the crossing from one country into the next, and wondering whether the people were different. Whether the family who had lived in the house he sheltered in for the night were the kind of people to sit and read stories together, or if the father and mother sent the kiddies away to bed to sit and make moon eyes at each other, or if the house was filled with angry words and sharp tongues, and to be endured rather than lived in. He’s not aware of any of that anymore, it’s all wallpaper and he the mover in the room, nothing matters except feeding the gun, positioning the gun, Blinky and Blue, and the horses, and anything outside can go hang.  
They have the Germans on the run, this week. At Broodseinde, there’d been phosphene gas, evil stuff, but with no wind, and they behind the infantry, easy enough to avoid, and they did. He’d seen the infantry men on the march after, those who lived, and they’d talked of being burnt alive from the inside out, and why hadn’t they shelled the cloud? He’s no answer but the one from the officers, it’s no good, and it wastes the shells, and the latter’s the answer that moves him.  
They’ve a job to do, and they belong to it, and it to them, and that’s more important than anything else. There’s cold in the air again, and nothing he can do about it, except hobble the horses closer together, Blinky’s rigged together some extra blankets from coats he’s souvenired, and for the moment, it’ll do, though it won’t hold against the snow.   
He thinks of the week in the fancy English hospital, with blankets for the asking, and the day up in London, with the people living their lives as if no one was suffering, and he thinks that the war will never end. If it doesn’t, if this is all there is, at least he knows that he has a place where he belongs.


	35. November 1917, Palestine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has lost

Dear Mutti  
There’s nothing holy in this land, not any more.  
I cannot tell you how I get on with Wilhelm gone. I scarcely know myself. I miss him every day, and I scarce believe that he can no longer be alive, although it has been a good couple of months, with no good about them. I miss him terribly. He was so very much the best of brothers, even when I was the most annoying of little ones, always patient to show me a better way, to bring me home or out of a scrape, and he had such plans for his return. It seems so unfair that when he has done so much for so many that he cannot live to go home and be with Margaret and his little one. Why was it him instead of me? How could God be so cruel? I cannot answer that question, cannot even voice it to anyone here, when it could the next time we ride out be any of us. It could be me tomorrow. In some dark hours I wish it could be. I do not know who I am without my brother.   
We have been up and down Palestine, charging into the face of death so often I do not know how I live, except for luck. The British use us like tin soldiers and are keen enough that they do not care that the set is incomplete at the next retreat. Were it not for Pip, there should be even fewer of us. Charles fancies himself more and more Lawrence of Arabia, and recounts his stories as if he were King Arthur of old, and Charles some kind of Sir knight of the round table, but there’s nothing of romance or heraldry here, not even I can stomach that, make a joke out of it to entertain the fellows, not anymore, when all I see is my brother’s face before me, as he was. Wilhelm is gone, and nothing is funny anymore, and I do not know how you and Margaret and Josh will bear it.   
In the last town, I almost lost myself completely, there was a room, mother, and I thought it sheltered the man who had been firing, but instead when I entered, all ready to dispatch him, there was but a family, and a mother sheltering her children in the middle of death. I felt myself a monster and perhaps I am.  
Pray for me, and Wilhelm. I am sorry for writing you such a terrible letter, when I know that you and Margaret must be heartsore, but I am selfish and I need my mother to write and comfort me. I will try my best to be a son that you can be proud of, for Wilhelm’s sake, as well as your own, but I am not certain that I shall succeed. I miss him so.  
Your son  
Ben


	36. December, 1917, somewhere in Frances, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen has almost lost everything

I thought she was dead. I thought she had died in the shell blast, and my stomach turned over and over until I had to vomit. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when I saw her move. She has no right to be alive, to survive a shell blast that close, but the luck that turned against her to be in that part of the tent, assisting on an operation, and not the next tent, or the tent over, kept her to life, and to me. She had shrapnel down one side of her body, and Doctor Whiteside thought she had cracked her skull. The patient on the table died, and his body in so many places it looked more like a horrible jam than something that lived, and breathed. Doctor James died soon after, his stomach too far punctured, too much of it missing. We all came running, as you can imagine, those of us who were free to do so, and we moved the wounded who lived, and the medical staff who lived, to another tent, and when I saw her dear body, and all the blood, I the unflappable, the one who sees the worst and does not flinch, I lost my stomach, I could not breathe.   
She is on a boat back to Blighty now, and when she is there, she will be well cared for, and she will be warm, and receive the best of medical treatment, with parents who love her, and she will be back where she belongs. She made me promise to stay alive, for all that is worth in the face of such things that are beyond my control. I promised, of course, but that was only for the purpose of having her agree to ship out. I am glad she will be safe, and in far better a place for treatment than here but I do not like not knowing for myself that she is well, not the same as being able to care for her with my own hands. She will be fine. She must be. And I must carry on here for the two of us.  
Our hospital is moving back from the front in the next week. Rumours are that we Australians, and in particular we VAR, will be removed to England before long. I long for that more than I long for anything else. To be able to be near Clementine, I hasten to add, not to shirk my duty here, for there is so much work yet to do. So many soldiers going out to the front, and all I can think of is how soon it will be that they die, or pass through our care here. So pointless, not that one can say that to men going to their almost certain death. I cannot imagine that this war will ever end, and yet, at some point, there will be no more men to send. What then?


	37. March 1918, somewhere in France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One foot in front of the other and it's a long way to go

The Germans are pushing at Amiens, and they need to push back, is the word. They say the tide of the war is turning, but Jack cannot agree with this from where he sits, still in thick of it, now being shunted along the same roads they’ve trudged along before.  
There are no pretty girls left along the road, they’ve all left, or died. The mud’s the same, but all the distinguishing features are gone. It stinks of rot. There’s not a road sign in miles, not a tree, not a church steeple, and they march along with the horses, trusting that that lads in the front of the column have got it right, and they won’t end up in advance of everyone else, as happened to the nth, of whom few remain.   
The speed is faster. When they did these roads before, he remembers Blinky singing about the mademoiselles from Armentieres, and it’s a long way from Tipperary, and someone passing along a bottle of brandy from the front of the lines, down to the back, and the burn of it down to his stomach, as he walked beside the horses, brass buttons relatively shiny. Thinking he knew it all, after Gallipoli, and the trenches there, and the certainty that he’d be dead before the Infantry left the Dardenelles, and being wrong. Thinking he’d show his father.  
There’s no brandy this time, and looking across at Blue, he’s not certain that anyone’s feeling any more of that fresh brash feeling. There’s a job to be done, they’re the boys to do it, and they will get to Amiens, and see that the job’s done properly. He hasn’t thought about his father in months. His father is likely dead, and he can’t summon any kind of feeling about it at all. Doesn’t have a photograph, and can’t remember his face.   
The infantry will be in the trenches again, down in the mud, and they’ll be playing the cover again, the game of dialling in the range before the other side can manage it, and he’s not sure he has hearing left from the last time. It’s no matter, because he’s going where he’s sent. It’s all he has left.


	38. July 1918, Jerusalem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben is not dead, but he's not whole yet either

Dear Mutti  
I am sorry I have not written to you before now. The field hospital did not have the facility, and they would not allow me to write even if they did. Do not worry, there is not the much matter with me anymore but a scar on my left shoulder, for the Baumgartner constitution is proof against everything but a well placed bullet, and this one was not.   
I lost Spike in the last month, in an ill fated charge, and was lucky not to lose myself, as he went down, to a coward’s trick of spikes in a pit, and it was not a good death he died, though I was with him though it all, as the battle went on about me, and I defended myself about him. I am on a dead man’s waler, Gurney. He is not quite the stalwart Spike was, ever ready to summon his strength to the sticking point for me, and who I miss dearly with every ride, but Gurney will do, and I’m sure we will get used to each other, as Spike and I did, after he first nipped me, and then grew to love and trust me, as I did him, although not the nipping. There’ll never be another horse like Spike for me, though, so full of fire and devotion, such a steady footer, and tough in the face of fire and I will not forget him. My left shoulder will not ever be quite the same, but I have my arm still, and in a few months, if I am lucky, the scar will be stable. It’s dry enough here at the moment, which helps.  
To where we are, I am allowed to say, for we are told it is in your papers, that we have passed the banks of the River Jordan, and the towns of the Old Testament are real. Jerusalem was no man’s Christmas present, except that our horses liked it well enough, clip clopping along the pavement.   
Wilhelm would have enjoyed seeing these places, but I find it harder and harder to play the clown, and quote the Bible verses I learnt at your table to keep the fellows from gloom. Some of the lads, Charles included, are finding more consolation in drink when we are in town for a rest, and are becoming quite the reprobates, you would scarce recognise them if they turned out this way at home. Fear not, I will not. I will, as ever, do my duty for honour and so on, but I feel a longer way from home than ever and more and more tired of doing it.  
I have soaked the edge of the paper in the River Jordan, in case you care to add it to your memorabilia. I would include a memento of Jerusalem, but all the pebbles I have, have either been in my mouth to stave off thirst, or have been in my shoe and have rubbed me raw, and I’ll wager you want none of either.  
Your son  
Ben


	39. October 1918, Alexandria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridgid is homesick and heartsick all in one

She’s replacing the bandages on a fellow’s arm, a Toby Burton from Toowoomba, and he’s lucky to still have it, the cut deep down his arm and half into his shoulder, clearly a metal edged thing that did it, and not a bullet. She’s no idea why it hasn’t taken with infection, and rotted, how lucky he can have been to have kept it when she’s seen so many who haven’t, boys for the butcher’s blocks, and all hands to hold them down while it’s done. She forces a smile.   
“Did you know,” he says, and she looks up from the wrapping, “that they have us using swords now. Sabres, they’re called. Like we’re back in the olden days. The Light Horse with swords.”  
She shakes her head, not understanding.   
“Oh, it must have been something to see, us all charging down on Samakh, with the sabres out. Then there’s the shouting, d’you see, as we near in, and it’s not even words, right enough, or if it is, it’s something in Maori, those New Zealand boys get their blood up, and by the time we’re there, the Turks don’t know whether we’re real or something out of the history books. Swords slashing down on them like a magpie’s beak.”  
She pays attention to the bandage now, tucking it neatly in. “So, you just sweep in and cut people’s heads off? How positively mediaeval.”  
He puts his hand, the one that’s not on the arm being bandaged, heavily down on the bed by him, close fisted. “Look. Look, that’d be the ideal world, the one the officers live in. What actually happens, nurse, is that then we have to get off the horse to get at people, and that’s with our bayonets, and Samakh was messy, messier than heads off. You wouldn’t believe it of me, would you, I look like a nice enough bloke? I gutted a fellow. His shit was on my sword when I got it out. He spat blood at me, and it’s on my shoes, if the sand hasn’t taken it all. To be fair, he was holed up in a prickly pear thicket, and he’d have done for me if I could. I stabbed another right through the ribs and listened to him whistle his last breath out. I stood and listened. It’s all mad. I’ve had jack of this. If that bloke had taken my arm off, I’d be for home, right?”   
She nods. It’s undeniable. She’s packaged boys off, bandaged, and crutched, and missing limbs, many times before now, if they survive the amputation and the weeks after it. She thinks, but does not say, that usually they feel a little sad, at least, to be leaving their mates behind, when they can’t help. That they aren’t gloating about the glory of the battle they’ve fought, or rejoicing that they won’t be fighting anymore. That it’s a little more nuanced than that, when you come to the point of being shipped home. Then, of course, there’s the missing limb once they are home.  
She pats the bed, instead of his arm, and places it down, wincing as his face grimaces. “Perhaps the war will end. Perhaps we’ll all get to go home. Perhaps your arm will heal up. I’ll bring along the tea in a minute or two. Try to get some sleep.”  
He slumps down into the bed. “You sound just like Chauvel, the old General, you know. He’s always telling a chap a pretty story. That all we have to do is get through the day and our sweethearts will be waiting for us at home. Haven’t the heart to tell him that mine married someone else, probably even before we sailed out. Probably better that way. No, it’ll be months and years of this yet, I reckon. Once those doctors think I can move my arm again, it’ll be me out there with the bayonet and sabre, clearing the towns of those dirty Turks.”   
She stands back up, away from the bed. “Perhaps he has a point, though. Not about the sweethearts, I’ll grant you. All you need to do now is rest. That’s an order, soldier.”  
“Right-o.” he says, and she sees his shoulder move, without the arm following, with the ghost of a salute.  
She’s down the yard before she thinks better of it. It makes a good space to pace in, and it’s chill in the evening air, and she has some time before it’s time to take the teas around. Her headpiece flicks her in the cheek, as she paces. They’re using swords, as well as bullets, and gutting people. The sword sweeping up the body, and cutting it wide open, and leaving people to die drowning in their blood and shit, and she wants no part of it. She does not, absolutely does not, want to be bandaging up people to go back out there and do it again. On the other hand, it makes no sense to be so repulsed, when she’s spoonfed boys who had bullets remove their cheek. When she’s helped to change the bandages of one poor lad who lost both his left leg and his private parts to a shell. Swords are only a different iteration of the horror. It’s ridiculous to feel this revolted.   
The corner of the courtyard has a handy chair to sit in, and she does, holding her hand tightly in the other. She’ll have to go back in there. She’ll have to look at the Toby chap, and treat him, and every other soldier who comes in, as well as she can, and take each day as it comes.   
She closes her eyes, just for a moment, and pictures her farmhouse. There’s a chair, could be this one, on the porch, and the porch painted white, with an edging patterned in wood, and she’s looking out across her fields, at a sunset, could be a brown haired fellow beside her, because he's hard to shake, that one, no matter how she’s tried. In the morning, she’ll milk the cow, and let the goat in to trim the grass around the foot of the stairs. The worst thing she’ll have to deal with is a brown snake in the chicken coop, and she has a shovel for that. There’s no war. There’s no young men with blood seeping through their uniforms, and telling her horrors. She’s had enough of adventure and she’s keen for her duty to be over, and it won’t ever be over and it’s hard to pretend. She opens her eyes, and the sunlight is blinding.


	40. October 31, 1918

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben sees light

Dearest Mutti  
We have been told that the Turks have signed the armistice, and the war for us should be over.  
It is impossible to believe that this thing, this wretched waste of life, should be over, as simply as a signature on a page. That signature will not bring Wilhelm’s life back to us, and yet, how many future lives will it spare? Has it spared mine? These last few months have had us fighting with sharp edges, up close, and I find my stomach for it turning, although of course, I do my part. It would be unthinkable to slack and find that my fellow soldiers dead, or dying, as a result. But the thought of being spared any more is very sweet.   
I will make this letter short, and hope that we will be arriving home before it.  
I look forward to meeting my nephew soon  
Ben


	41. 11 November 1918, Devon, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen cannot quite be happy

It is the peace that we have waited for, for which I have prayed. Such a feeling in the ward, the boys are so happy, and we listen to the radio announcements constantly. None of them can bear to have it turned off.   
We have had such a dreadful time of it, such a constant stream of wounded, and the ones who are sent to Devon are not very well off. They are the ones that we sent on, who might have a chance, out of the mud and the cold, and when I sent them from France myself, I confess I was more hopeful that they would live, than the record bears out. Oh! Yesterday there was a young couple of lads, who were wounded in the same push, and died within an hour of each other, the later lad holding the other one’s hand as he passed. Not alone in the world for neither in the world anymore, and I am certain that had the first lived, the second would have found a way to cling to life too. If they’d held on a few days more, survived that last push, they’d have been safe too.   
Which is to say that I miss my dear Clem. I know that she is doing better, and she writes to me, although the letters are not quite the same as the night conversations we would have, lazily spilling out words when we should have been sleeping. She asks me whether I will visit her. I have done, twice, and she the first time looked the shadow of herself, head shaven, when once she had such glorious golden red curls, that I would sink my fingers into, and hold her to me, and she is half the weight that she was, and that was scarce enough, and I thought that first time would be the last, that the next would be a telegram to tell me that she lived no more, if her family were kind enough to let me know. The second visit was two months ago, and it was as if she did not remember that I had visited her before. Her hair had grown, and the curls were back, and she looked on her way to health, but it was as if she did not remember properly anything that had happened after the shell. Her mother said that I should not take it to heart, and that as long as I could continue to visit, I should do, and perhaps the memories would stay. Perhaps is such a little word to hang the future on.   
I miss her, is all that consumes me when I lie down at night. I miss the way in which she would kiss me, and the delighted way in which she would laugh into her pillow when I succeeded in being stealthy enough to sneak us both into one bed, and then to navigate the folds of sheets, and nightclothes, and succeed in all else that matters. I miss the way in which she would nag at me about things, about the way in which I seek to please others, and not think of myself, the way in which I would nag at her about not taking unnecessary risks. I do not know if it is right to keep on loving her, when she cannot remember properly one day’s conversation from the next.   
I should be happy, for the war is over, and I and Clem are still alive. That is how I should feel. I can see though that with the war over, there will be coming a day when I should take my leave of Devon, and England, and Clementine, and go home. Without her. My heart breaks to think it, but perhaps that would be the kindest thing, for surely in time, if she is so hardpressed with her memory, she will forget me too.


	42. Christmas 1918, Egypt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has had enough

Dear Mutti  
I find myself chafing in my peace time role. We are important, so the British tell us, to keep the peace we bought so dearly, for the delineations that have been agreed are not pleasing to all, and riots break out from time to time.  
I am no police man, and I speak none of the local language, and here German will not do. I cannot broker peace any way other than by being seen to be a fighting man, and that is not a role I cherish any more. The war is over. Fighting to preserve the Empire is one thing, but killing civilians who do not agree with their government is quite another.  
I have, however, had a chance to acquire a small stuffed elephant for Joshua, which will return on the ship in my bedroll, along with the wooden horse that Wilhelm whittled, and has travelled with me up and down. I have also acquired a taste for the strong coffee that they serve, which you would enjoy no end, but that I shall have to leave behind, as there is no such thing at home.  
I hope to be home before winter, yours, not mine, God and the British willing  
Your faithful son  
Ben


	43. January 1919, Brisbane docks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And like that, it's over for Jack

Jack sleeps for twenty four hours altogether, before his bladder, and his hunger, wake him. He’s forgotten how to be seasick, although he can see plenty of the other lads haven’t. It seems a dream to be in the one place, with his cobbers, for Blinky and Blue are there with him, without them having to do anything. No guns, no mud, and although the hold stinks the same as the way over, and the food’s the same miserable slop as it was four years ago, it tastes like bloody ambrosia, is what Blue says, and he’s not wrong.   
There’s a stream of men once the ship docks at Brisbane, and some of them are kneeling down and kissing the concrete, like it’s holy. Not Jack. Jack’s sniffing the air, testing it until he smells the lick of eucalypt, and there’s frangipani in bloom, and the grass is vibrantly green, like he’s in a dream. He’s home.   
Blue’s helped him with the emancipation paperwork, and he posts it off before they hop the train. Blinky’s never said where he’s from, and he’s sticking with Jack for the time being. Blue’s heading to Melbourne, he says, and then to his people’s farm, but he buys the ticket out to Dalby just the same, for where Blinky goes, Blue follows, and Jack’s grateful for the company. Blue sleeps on his shoulder as they shunt out, but Jack doesn’t sleep a wink the whole way out, or so he thinks until Blinky shakes him up.   
The house is smaller, less grand than he remembers. Blue lets out a whistle, though, “Fancy, Jack.”  
Blinky shakes his head. “I’ve seen bigger. So’ve you. Shelled them too.”  
Jack lets out a bark of a laugh.  
There’s no one in the house at the moment at all, no servant, no house staff, not even the graziers, off away with the cattle. When the graziers are back, there will be work, and that’ll do for the moment. For now, it’s all theirs. It’s home.


	44. February 1919, Darling Downs, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it's over for Gwen

I am home, I tell myself, and I cannot quite believe it. My room, less one room mate, is as I left it. Clean, and comfortable, and my picture of a French chateau still remains, although I know it now to be as much of a bubble of fiction as any other childhood imagining. Everything is as it was, but I cannot imagine how I belonged here.   
The Gwen who was biddable, and quiet, and did as she was asked, must be somewhere inside still, and I will summon her back out, for otherwise I cannot imagine living here without her. It is too quiet, and too still, like the air before a shelling.   
My father has said that he lived on the edge of a knife while I was gone, and I put him through misery by making the choice that I did. That I was disrespectful, and thoughtless. I heard him say the words, but they had no meaning to them. I know that what I did was the right thing to do. If I had not gone, there would have been one less hand to ease the suffering, and there was so much suffering that could not have been eased already. To say so to my father, who had not been there, would have been too difficult. Jack, and two other drivers, have returned from France, and are at the Smith’s house. They would have understood, but they were not there.   
My mother cried, and I did not. She told me she was so glad I was home, and safe, and unharmed, and that now, now I could settle down and get married, have children, make a home of my own, and forget all that I had seen. How could I forget anything that I have seen? How could I want to make myself back into the girl that I thought I was four years ago? Besides the war, and the memory of those men I lost, and helped save, there is my dear Clementine, and although she may forget me, I shall never forget her. I cannot quite see how to live here, live now. I smile as politely as I ever did, and do what I’m asked, but it hurts. My hands have started shaking again.


	45. April 1919, Darling Downs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over for Bridgid

“You’re so brown”, Imogen says, and Bridgid smiles politely, and tries to meet Gwen’s eyes.   
“It must be the sand. It’s ingrained in every bit of my body, Aunt. You may call me the sphinx going forward.” Bridgid laughs at herself, and Imogen, confused, laughs politely too.  
“You are still in your nursing outfit! I would have thought that you would have changed in Brisbane,” says Griff, disapprovingly.  
“I had no other clothes, you see,” she says, and executes a pirouette, skirts belling up. “Or money for that matter to buy any with. None that were appropriate, in any case, as I fancy you would not wish me to return dressed Egyptian style.”  
“No, indeed. Go and change, then,” commands Griff.   
“Oh, but I have changed,” she laughs, “in all but the clothing. I’ll go, I’ll go!”  
Gwen watches her cousin change, in the privacy of their once more shared room. Her cousin hasn’t changed at all, not in appearance, really, somewhat browner, and much leaner, but she’d reckon those worry lines about her eyes hadn’t come from the Egyptian sun. She has cold cream, that Clementine’s family sent with a note from her mother. Nothing from Clem herself, and she cannot tell the reason why, and when she applies the cream at night she remembers the feel of Clem’s cheeks, smooth and soft, against her rough fingers.   
With Bridgid in the room, it seems much less peaceful, like the air could become cyclonic at any second. They hug, and then Gwen notices that Bridgid is packing clothes into her bag, not out of it. She watches, for a couple of minutes, and then offers to help.  
She knows, as well as Bridgid does, that it’s in her father’s hands to release the lease at any time. She knows too that there’s little point in saying something that the other person knows, and instead, focusses on being helpful. On helping her cousin do what she’s trying to do. It’s everything that she owns, the little of it, out of the cupboard and into the bag, as if she’s leaving for a journey again.  
The bag, surprisingly, is stowed under Bridgid’s bed. Bridgid cups Gwen’s chin in one hand, and looks her over. “How are you? I don’t want to talk about anything, but I’m up for it if you need it.”  
It’s too kind, and too tempting to tell her everything, with those searching eyes on her. If she breaks now, then she breaks for good, and so she lies, lies with her brown eyes open as wide as she can make them. “No,” she says, “Only the usual. France was beautiful, or it was, to start with. We moved a great deal. If you don’t want to talk about the war, I’m happy enough not to talk about it either.”  
“Good,” says Bridgid. “I’ll see you at tea time then.”   
Gwen kisses her on the cheek, and Bridgid kisses back, but fudges when Gwen kisses the other. It’s funny to think that there are things she knows that Bridgid does not. It’s not funny at all, when she thinks of the ways in which she misses Clementine, and to wonder whether she is as missed in return, and she tries not to think any more. 

Bridgid takes the brown mare that her aunt rides, when she’s a mind to. She’s no Jimmy horse, but she’ll do. Beggars can’t be choosers, and after four years, and next to no wages, she’s certainly on the kindness of her aunt and uncle, and it’s something she can’t think about, for now.  
The road to her house is brown and dry, the rain hasn’t come yet, and dust flies up around her horse’s hooves. It’s a trifle awkward, bouncing on a horse again, and her saddle’s not soft, but it’s not that long a ride, and every foot that passes is one closer to freedom, and her seat will return, she tells herself, but she’s glad to dismount at the approach to the house, leaving the horse there to graze on the long grass, and carrying her bag on her shoulder the last little while.   
The fence is down, and it’s clear that sheep, or cattle or, looking at the pats left behind, both, have been in, but not for a while. The house is peeling, but the doors and windows, as she does the slow circuit through the long grass about its foundations, are intact. When she puts her hand to the door, it is locked, and she imagines that to be her uncle’s work. Through the kitchen window, she can see her table, and her workbench, and no way to get to them. She knows how that conversation will turn, and she doesn’t see the point, he’s sterner than he was four years ago, and she imagines that the house is lost to her now. She’s lost the thread, and she doesn’t know how to recover it. She’ll need a lawyer, and for that she’ll need money, and she’s none.   
There’d been grain left in the silo four years ago, and there’s mice now. She’ll need a cat, and possibly some cement, and she’s no way of getting it.  
A brown snake slithers out of the morass of weeds that had been the vegetable patch, and she retreats to her front porch, in the chair that’s where she had imagined it, surrounded by the peeling paint, and looking out over the unkempt field, she buries her head in her lap to block out the view, and finally, after four years, she cries.


	46. June 1919, Alexandria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And almost over for Ben

Dear Mutti  
A quick note, to say that finally, we are to embark, and leave the desert, and all, behind.   
We shall be demobilised in Brisbane, and I and the Smiths, and Jock Stuart shall be with you before August, so we hope.  
Our horses are to stay. I am glad Spike was spared this parting, for it is hard enough to give up Gurney. The locals have some interesting ways of spurring on their horses, whips with needles and the like, and the British have promised us that ours will not be so treated. I do not know how they intend to avoid this, as I cannot imagine the British will remain here for long, or if they do, that they will need all the walers. Some of the horses, the older and less energetic, will doubtless be more valuable as horsehair, and horsehide, and I hope this will not be the fate of mine, for he was a good horse, for all his lacking in comparison with Spike.  
You are not to be troubled with the way I look now, compared to where I was when I left, for the desert leaves little flesh on the bone, and the important thing is that I will be home.  
Love to you, and Joshua, and best wishes to Margaret  
I will be with you shortly, God willing  
Ben


	47. July, 1919, the Darling Downs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes home isn't exactly where you left it

It’s mid afternoon on a Saturday, and there’s a storm coming finally, Hughie’s going to come good and send it down, the ground’s dry and the crops parched, and the corellas wheeling and screeching. Bridgid is on the verandah, darning socks, with her aunt providing a running commentary on how the technique she’s using is wrong, all wrong, and she’s biting her tongue, as she did in Egypt, and Gwen is sewing a shirt, rejoicing in the freedom to do it again, in a pattern and a fabric that is not wholly serviceable, when Griff, sipping his mug of tea, stands abruptly, sending the farmcat from his lap to the floor, and triggering a mess of meows, and answering barks from the dogs. There’s a rider coming up the lane, dust swirling around the horse’s hooves, and clothing and a hat that’s overly familiar, and makes Bridgid look around for the bandages, heart thumping, ready to staunch the blood, until Gwen holds her arm.   
“There’s no war here. Calm down,” Gwen hisses.  
Her heart’s still pounding. The hat’s doffed, and a man’s underneath which she has to squint to recognise, his clothes hanging off him, and his face browned and lean.   
“It’s Jock Stuart, as I live and breathe,” her father exclaims. “Gwen, fetch the man a drink. Son, I hardly know what to say! We’d not heard news for a couple of months and now here you are.”  
Jock stays seated, and the horse walks on, slowly.   
“The others won’t be far behind, but I seized the only spare horse at the station. Major Pip can’t give this fellow orders anymore, no sir! Need to get home to Ma, and the girls. I’ll take that water,” and Gwen reaches up, and he grasps it, careful not to spill, and drinks it down to the end, in one continuous gulp, which Griff watches, entranced.  
“Who of you’ve made it home, then?” asks Bridgid, as she takes the cup from Jock, passing it back to her aunt, who stands, with her hand on her mouth.   
“Bridgid, you can’t ask that! Jock, never you mind. You get on home to your family, I can’t imagine what they’re going to say, for the joy of having you home, hale and healthy.”  
Jock whistles, as he lets his breath out, and Bridgid fancies she can see the dust move around him. “Oh, Missus Jones, she’s missed us, is all there is to it. Never you fear, Bridgid, you’ll be seeing them soon enough, and you can explain yourself directly. You know about my brother, surely. Wilhelm Baumgartner too.”  
Bridgid sits, knocking the darning aside. She’s been up to Frau Baumgartner’s and sat with Margaret, and the little Joshua, that morning, and somewhere on her skirt are the remains of a scone from sticky fingers. He looks like a tinier version of his father. Long skirts are an excellent hiding place, it transpires, if you’re small enough. Margaret cried, the first time she visited. After that, she used it as an opportunity to take a walk, or a bath, or ride into town unaccompanied. Joshua, under Bridgid’s tutelage, can now climb the smallest apple tree. Frau watched from the window, with her hand over her mouth, and Bridgid’s fairly sure she was laughing. She made Frau smile, and that’s not a small accomplishment, not any more, and swinging the child down from the low branch, she feels the sunshine and smiles too, a big one that makes little Joshie boy smile too, briefly, before he demands to be fed, again.   
Bridgid tries not to think about Wilhelm, and the table in her house that he surely helped make. The big brother that wasn’t really hers to have. Frau Baumgartner too, she tries not to think about growing older. Her hair, always neat in a bun, silver pulled tight against the skin, now shows the skull, and her arms tremble when she holds Josh. She has letters from Ben, and Wilhelm too, that she showed Bridgid, kept safe in her neat kitchen table drawer, well creased, and read, and known by heart. Bridgid has imagined, of a time, Ben writing letters, in the desert, looking out the right words to comfort the person he’s writing to, but it wasn’t his mother she imagined that person to be. There’s no letters for her. She’s definitely not thinking about Ben. She’s deliberately not.  
“Yes, we heard about poor Stephen,” Griff says. “A terrible loss for your parents. Terrible. Young Wilhelm too, with a little one he’d never met. Terrible. You’ll find Jack Smith up at the big house, with a couple of Victorians, I think he said it was, and they’ve quite the stories to tell about France. You’ve all done a great service for your country.”  
Gwen watches her father, his lips moving, and the words coming out like the propaganda machines she’d listened to, for too many nights on the radio, with blood on her hands, and young men trying to hold onto life through her eyes as she remade their beds around them, and dying, and she sits also. Jack’s stories, when she’d listened to them, had been more censored than any government could have made them. No blood, very little maiming, and the mud had been entertaining, rather than soul destroying. If she could talk, she’d talk to him. The needle pricks through her skirt, and she lifts the bundle of fabric, glad of the distraction.  
“So, Baumgartner the younger, he pulled through well enough, did he? Managed to find enough decent shots to surround himself with to last the distance?” Bridgid asks, and she’s working the darning needle again, all attention on the second to last sock, and closing the holes.   
“Oh,” says Jock, “more the other way round. He’s the crack shot, you know, or perhaps you don’t. It’s hard to remember how it was before. I’ve seen him drop a man at 500 yards. Begging your pardon, Gwen, I don’t mean to speak too plainly.”  
Bridgid blows dust off the sock. “Yes, the feats of a lion, I’m sure. The eye out of a bird on the wing, too, is the next boast, yes? I’m sure loved by all in country and town, too. Wherever he goes, he finds a charm for it. Is that the song he’s got you singing, Jock?”  
Jock hands the cup down to Griff, and Gwen can see the tendons in his wrist as he passes it over. Like a wire. The men in France that came through the hospital were pale, and clammy, and dead, at the end of it, but they weren’t this whip thin.  
“Oh, he’s not the one to boast, is Ben. Sure, he doesn’t have to. He could charge to have folk listen to him, if he had a mind to it. He could spin a yarn, change a person’s mind with no effort to him at all. But you’d know that better than I, wouldn’t you?” He meets Bridgid’s eyes coldly, and Bridgid, confused, looks back at the socks. “Much obliged to you for the water, Missus Jones. I’ll be seeing you at Sunday service tomorrow, I expect.” He wheels the horse around, and in a cloud of dust, he’s gone out the gate.  
“Bridgid,” hisses Gwen. “His brother died. You should leave well enough alone.”  
Bridgid turns the sock inside out. “Yes. Yes, I probably should. Does it really matter? Jock doesn’t care. Not anymore. His brother’s gone. Nothing I can say can change that. You saw his face, he’s lived with it for years. You know how it is.”  
Griff turns, putting his back to the dust evaporating down the lane. “You’ll speak with more respect than that. He’s earnt it.”  
Bridgid carefully folds the sock in her mending basket. “I know better than you what he’s earnt, and how he’s earnt it, and I’ve earnt it too. I’m taking the mare for a ride.”  
“No,” her uncle says, evenly. “No, you are not. You and Gwen need to look out her best dress for tomorrow. If Charles is back from the wars, then you have your future to think about, Gwen. You’re not to put a foot wrong by telling him you’ve served abroad. The Smiths have funny ideas about what’s appropriate, and we need to make sure you’re well looked after. You neither, Bridgid. It’s not been that good a four years here that we’ve got surplus, and we’re going to need to keep sub-leasing the land on the west to the graziers. Gwen marrying well will see you both right.”  
Gwen looks up, and her needle sticks into her thumb.   
“Don’t look at me like that. You go and do as you’re told. You too, Bridgid. Right quickly, too.” Griff’s face, all stern set jaw, and furrowed eyebrows, mirrors the face of the Alexandria hospital administrators, on the arrival of a fresh delivery of wounded, with nowhere to put them, and not enough medicines to treat them. Bridgid swallows down a lump in her throat, as her memory gives her the smell again, of an overheated room, and the butcher’s shop smell. No one’s going to die, not now. This seriousness, all for the return of a bunch of foolish men, and the tying up of a future. She can’t imagine trying to explain the last four years to someone who wasn’t there in the first place, in any case. It’s as well to ask a mouse to explain the moon. Ridiculous. Looking over at Gwen, the laugh chokes in her throat, with Gwen’s white face, and her own Jones set jaw.   
“Well, then. Gwen, we’ve our orders, I suppose, but you better be sure that Charles is still the right cup of tea for you, or you’ll be needing to think of a better future. Right?”   
Gwen doesn’t look at her as she sweeps by, the bundle of blood stained shirt tight in her hand. Bridgid doesn’t look at Griff as she follows. The verandah creaks underfoot, and Gwen freezes at the sound. Bridgid snorts.   
“There’s no shelling here. It’s just the wood. Keep moving.”   
“Thanks,” Gwen says, in a voice just this side of sincere.   
The room is too small for both of them now, Bridgid feels, and their elbows touch as they stand before the brown stained wardrobe, crazed mirror reflecting parts of them merged with each other. Gwen reaches for the door, but Bridgid’s hand is there first, and Gwen retracts it, awkwardly.   
There, on one end of the hangers, are the patched and torn skirts, the white blouses, and the red jackets, and white nurses’ headgear, and Bridgid’s hand is on them before she thinks, and she too retracts it awkwardly. At the other, a white dress with a bodice, and lace, and ribbon trimmings, and a blue with pleats, the one she’d had before the war. Bridgid looks at her skirt, and the tartan that hides the stains, and her plain white blouse, sensible with buttons, and shrugs. Gwen reaches for the white, without looking at her cousin.  
Bridgid sits on her bed, and bounces until it squeaks. “This is ridiculous. I’m not dressing myself up to pretend I’m something I’m not. Your father can’t keep pretending he’s in charge of me. If you had any care for your future you’d do the same. Dressing up for the soldiers? Did you ever hear such a thing.”  
Gwen regards the white, hanging neatly in the wardrobe in a shape that resembles the girl that she used to be.   
“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Bridgid remarks, watching her, legs crossed at the ankle, and swinging them underneath.  
“It’s easier, though. Haven’t you had enough of hard, for the moment?” 

At the Baumgartners, the storm having hit midway between the station and home, when his mother opens the front door, on the house that remained exactly the same, brown wood, and carved dove above the lintel, Ben sneezes, and misses the point where she tears up, and presses a tight fist against the sob. His mother does not cry.   
Margaret exclaims from her seat, and there’s a three year old hiding behind the sofa, is all he sees before his head is pulled down to his mother’s shoulder, and cradled in the nook of her neck like he’s the three year old. His mother is quite as wet as him when she lets go, or his eyes are blurry, or both. She pats him emphatically on the back, and pulls him into the room, where he drips a puddle on the entrance mat, and Margaret towels him down with brisk efficiency. There’s one of his old shirts produced, and it’s dry, and his shoulders strain the seams, he doesn’t fit anymore, and he realises after he’s stripped and changed, that propriety probably calls for him to change in a separate room from his mother and sister in law. He’ll have to remember that.   
The room is dark, and homely, like a cave against the rain. There’s more rugs, and blankets, than when he’d left, and underfoot there is a toy car, metal, and he recalls the gifts in his bag. Kneels down, and the brown curls, and eyes appear from behind the sofa, curious. Holds out the little wooden wheeled horse, and holds it out, as if to attract a wild animal.   
“This is from your father,” he says. “He made me promise to give it to you, and here it is. Make your dad happy by giving it a go, eh?”  
The small person emerges, and he swears quietly, for the small boy is the spitting image of his brother writ tiny, and quite as serious as he approaches, but as he backs away, toy in hand, it’s his own smile he recognises, breaking across the little one’s face.   
He straightens, awkwardly, and stretches out, reaching his hands up above his head, and bringing them back down by his side. Joshua is now occupied by running the horse up and down the sofa, and making accompanying clip clop noises with his tongue, and has forgotten again his unknown uncle.  
“Margaret, I’m so sorry. When he died, his last words were of you. That’s all the comfort I have. I’m so sorry.”   
Margaret takes his hand. “Not now. We’ll talk later, when Josh’s abed. But thank you, Ben.”  
He nods, jerkily.   
His mother takes his other hand, and between the two of them, they pull him into the kitchen. “It is time for dinner, I think. Food, I think would be a good idea?”  
He nods, more certain. Josh climbs up into the corner chair, where he used to sit. He finds himself opposite his mother, and her eyes are soft.  
The food makes him want to weep. There’s beef in a stew, with onions, and bay leaves, and cinnamon, he thinks, and there are dumplings, and there is pickles, tangy with vinegar, and it’s more flavour than he’s had in years, barring the couple of times when they had leave into Alexandria, and he’d had enough cash to sample the bazaar, the tagines, thick with cinnamon, and fruit, and the baklava, so sweet his teeth hurt, and pickled chilis to bring heat to his cheeks, all the things that he’d tried when the troop sampled the brothels. He’s trying to savour every mouthful and it goes too quickly, and it’s another spoonful to try to chase the taste, and another, and before he knows it, the bowl’s empty.  
His mother heaps his bowl again, and she’s reaching for another ladleful when he finishes that, when he puts a hand on her arm, and begs for mercy.   
“You’ll have some plum cake, though. You’ve not eaten enough, you said. Eat now.”  
There’s three slices of that he has to take before she’s satisfied, and his stomach’s uncertain, although his taste buds are very certain that he never wants to leave the table. The plums are tangy, and sweet, and mellow, and the cake stained with purple about them, and caramel in the crumb, and if he was younger he’d have a fourth, and a groaning stomach, as it is, he’s pushing it.   
“Best cake, mutti. You’re the best baker this side of the Pyramids, and that’s for certain.”  
Margaret grins. “That one’s from Bridgid. You’ll have to tell her you’re home, and tell her directly how much you appreciate her plums.”  
He pushes away from the table as if it were on fire, the chair grating on the floor, and as he stands, he sways. “I have a thousand stories to tell you, but I suspect I’ll fall asleep in the first one. It’s been a long road from the train, and a longer one the train from Brisbane, and a longer from Alexandria. I shall sleep on the sofa?”  
“No, Josh’s little bed will come in with me. Your old bed is still where you left it. He needed the Stuart trundle bed for his own, he fell out of yours.” Margaret says, and he sighs gratefully.   
“It will be fine, Margaret. Leave his little bed in with me. I haven’t slept alone in years, if you little Josh will give me your company? I will try not to snore.”  
Josh looks at his mother, wide eyed, and when Margaret nods, he looks back to his uncle gravely. “Sometimes I talk in my sleep.”  
Ben regards him gravely. “Sometimes I do too.”  
In his bed, and Josh in his little one, both tucked in against the cold, he can feel every part of his body straining down for release, warm and safe and tired. His calf cramps, and he rubs it absently, waiting for sleep to claim him.  
He can hear the little body snoring.   
He can hear his mother, and Margaret, talking by the fire, voices low, but distinct.  
“He looks old, mutti. He didn’t make a single joke, and this the boy who couldn’t be serious for a single meal before. Not even when I teased him about Bridgid.”  
“Best leave it alone. It’s good we have him back at all. The jokes will come. Ben could never be serious for very long. I wish we had them both. I so miss Wilhelm.”  
There’s a pause, and he imagines them both staring into the fire, and he remembers his brother here, and the last two weeks with the noises through the walls, that he tried not to hear, and the long walks he’d taken with his mother to give them the privacy that they needed, and somehow it not being enough, and the sadness in his brother’s eyes even as he smiled at her across the kitchen table. He remembers his brother, at the front of the church, looking down at Margaret, and the bundle of flowers she held against her dress, as if everything he needed had just walked in the door. He tries not to remember the blood he’d had to wash out of his jacket, the day after, after they’d dug the grave, and he holds the edge of the mattress, hard, through the thin sheets.   
“Well enough. Let him be as he is. He’ll have other things to think about, besides the Turks, and the sand, now he is home. You remember how serious Bridgid was when she came back from Alexandria, yes? The hospitals there with not enough bandages, and too many soldiers dying. And now she jokes with your little one and bakes bread, just as she did. Let Ben be, and he will do the same.”  
In the bed, he takes a deep breath, even as his muscles cramp up and he stretches against them. There’s a piece of the puzzle slotted in. Well enough. He’d start again.

Sunday morning, the church is full, and the Jones are late. It’s been half empty the last couple of months, and the minister, who’s never been very good at selecting an address that matches the issues at hand, has been working his way through some of Paul’s letters. Bridgid hates Paul. She hates his admonishments of women, and his preservation of the status quo. She’s adopted Lyndall’s trick of sleeping with her eyes open, and trying not to think about the garden that she could be in, if only she wasn’t in church. Today, though, there’s a buzz of noise, and the church is full, and when her eyes adjust to the darkness, she makes out the uniforms. Of the thirty or so who rode out, there’s ten uniforms sitting in amongst the pews, with families holding tight.  
The Jones’ pew is five from the back, on the right. Gwen, in front of her, stops in her tracks, the white skirts pressing up against hers, for there is Charles and his father in the front pew, with Jack and his mates in the pew behind, khaki uniforms up against the brown wooden seats, and all sitting to attention, like a parade ground. She can see the shine of Major Philip’s buckles from where she is, through the dark of the church. Charles stands, and waves boyishly, with exuberance, as if they were the other side of a field, and his father pulls him down. Gwen nods, jerkily, without her usual grace, and turns into the pew, catching her shin on the edge. Last night, she’d brushed Gwen’s hair until it shone, and it shines now. Gwen had insisted on repaying the favour, and she’d had to brace against the bed, and Gwen brushed it so hard that the roots still sting. She can feel them now, tingling. Gwen had told her that it was good that it was hard now, for it would be easy later, when she put it up in the morning, and Bridgid had told her that not telling Charles was the opposite, and she was buying herself hard later by going along with her father’s planning, and Gwen had told her, uncharacteristically sharp, to bite her tongue.   
Looking sideways at her cousin, now, Gwen’s blonde hair carefully arranged, and the dress, if not filled out quite so well as four years ago, is still becoming, and she’s an angel, and Bridgid’s missed her, and she wants her to be happy, so she bites on the inside of her cheek, copper taste of blood, and lets it be.   
In the second row on the left are the McGregors, but just the parents. No Percy, no Stuart, and Bridgid’s surprised to find her face wet, and wipes at it with the back of her hand. In the row six from the back, on the left, are the Stuarts, and Jock between his mother and his little brother, no longer so little as when he left, and there’s a missing son there, like a broken comb tooth in the silhouette. On the other side of that is Margaret, and a little dear Josh head, and then Frau, and then one curly headed chap, and she lets out the breath, and wipes at her eyes again. For she’s not going to be crying when he looks. She’s not going to be looking at him when he looks. It’s not fair that his brother’s not there next to Margaret, next to them all, and it’s suddenly all too real, all the boys she’d patched up, or lost, the last five years, and it’s all too much, and she’s choking on a sob, as they stand for the first song that starts the service. By the time the final chord sounds, she’s silent again. She’s waged a minor interior war with the part of herself that wants to swear in the way that she’d learnt in the wards, all blue air, and violent, and the part that she’s also learnt in the wards, to smile sweetly, and let it wash over her, like the wind over the sorghum fields, the water on a rock. If he looks, she doesn’t see it, for she’s determined to fix her eyes on the pulpit, and this time, even if the minister decides to read all of Paul’s letters, she’ll listen.

Afterwards, on the verandah around the church hall, the minister having said his piece, and the congregation sung lustily a hymn of thanksgiving and thanked God for the return of the ones who returned, and more sombrely a hymn of thanksgiving for those who did not, there’s company, in the form of uniformed men, in khaki, and hats with the emu plumes. Jack and his friends have cleared out, although he usually serves as tea master for the all, and Gwen stands on the verandah, uncertain.   
There’s Phillip, and he’s grey now at his temples, Gwen can see, and crows feet around his eyes, and he stands with feet firmly planted, like the verandah’s his, and they’re on it by his leave alone, and he has his hand on Charles’ shoulders. Charles is looking eagerly at her, hat in his hands, clean, shaved face, slightly tousled curls, feather rising and falling on his chest, and he’s grown wider, and more solid, than she remembers, the boy she remembers was slight under her hands, as he whirled around a dance floor, and looked less certain of himself, this man is certain, and he’s looking at her like she’s his, and it’s too late to tell him that she’s not. Finally, behind them both, is Benjamin, and he’s looking at Bridgid with something that Gwen can’t decode, and he’s grown too, but with no flesh on his bones, and looking like he hasn’t slept in years, his hair ruffled in the wind, and roughly cut at that, and she imagines that the last time Ben shaved was at least two weeks ago, or whenever it was the army last made them. Despite the heat of the afternoon, their shirts are worn down along each arm, and their pants are long, and none of them are flushed.   
“Griff, old fellow, it’s good to see you. Good to see you all. You look as if nothing’s changed, except the Jones girls have become even lovelier, wouldn’t you say Charles?” Phillip smiles at them all, and it looks well rehearsed, smiling everywhere but the eyes, and he doffs his hat, putting it down on the table.   
Charles nods, fervently. Excessively. Wordlessly.   
“Well, Gwen is certainly a vision. She’s the sort of girl you put on a postcard and keep in your breast pocket. The years have certainly been kind to you,” Ben smiles over at Bridgid, and Gwen can’t tell whether his eyes are smiling, but she thinks not. Bridgid puts her hands on her hips, deliberately. Gwen places one of hers on Bridgid’s elbow, and pushes them down. Bridgid holds her hands behind her back.   
“It’s hard to know how to compliment Bridgid without knowing her last name, other to note that she’s still alive, for which, well done, we who left in khaki didn’t all manage that. Tell me, did you ensnare a city slicker after all and take another name? Or did the years leave you still holding to your impossible standards?” Ben perches an elbow on the railing, and puts his chin in his hands, as if a child waiting for a story. Bridgid’s nostrils flare.   
“The farm’s not mine, if that’s what you mean. Yet. Oh Benjamin. Ben. Benjamin. I’m surprised the size of your head didn’t stop any bullets. Or your mouth. I mean, look at you, you survived. How nice. How was your war? Cleared up the Turks single handedly, and ensnared all the belles of Alexandria, or just the ones who took cash on the nail?”  
Charles laughs, and then looks reprovingly at her. “You shouldn’t know about ladies of uncertain virtue. That is definitely not a thing that you should know about. I really don’t think this conversation is appropriate.”  
“It is extremely nice to see you all. Ben, I’m so sorry about your brother.” Griff says, after a beat, looking sternly at Bridgid.   
“Shall we leave the young folk to catch up?” Charles claps Griff on the shoulder, and on the way in to the church hall for tea, Imogen very deliberately catches Bridgid’s eyes, and narrows them. Bridgid smiles sweetly.  
“Oh, I have such stories to tell you, Gwen. None of it suitable for the censors, but I can give you the best bits that they didn’t put in the papers over here, for certain.”  
Gwen’s skirt is trembling, Bridgid notes. As is her arm. Her wrist is cold, when Bridgid holds it, and her pulse is slowly thumping, one beat, and a pause, and another. She notes Ben looking at her hand, on Gwen’s wrist, one eyebrow up, and she wishes that her pulse would stop racing. She hates that it’s racing. Hates the lurch that her stomach gives, as he wipes his hand down his thigh, and runs it along the railing, testing the smoothness automatically, and she can tell it’s itching for sandpaper. Hates that she remembers.   
“Thanks, Charles. It’s awfully kind. It’s one thing hearing about it in the news, and certainly another from someone who’s been there.” Gwen forces out. She’s surprised that her teeth aren’t chattering. It feels like someone else is talking, not her. She can’t see the fair headed man right in front of her, for the blood. There’s blood seeping out and over her hands now, she thinks, and drops Bridgid’s hand with a start.   
“Yes, but I think I’ll save that for later. The Major needs to toddle off along home, you know, see what’s what.” Charles says, absently kicking his boots against the railing post.   
Ben stands, and stretches. “And by the Major, he means his father. Four years of this, I’ve had and that’s about more than enough.” He restores his hat to his head, the plumes bouncing back into place. “Need to run Mutti and Margaret home before anyone else accuses me of paying for affection by offering to fetch them a cup of tea.” He looks directly at Bridgid, and Gwen sees her start to flush, down under the collarpiece of her sensible white blouse. “Though I’ve never paid for affection before, not even in a foreign country, and I’m not about to start. I was the mug who waited outside with everyone’s dosh and listened to the ladies complain about their problems. That’s me, the sensible one.”  
Charles steps back against the railing. “I really don’t think you should be talking about this, Ben. What happens in Egypt should stay in Egypt.”  
Bridgid shakes her head. “Do make up your mind, Charles. If that’s the case, we can’t listen to your stories either, can we now?”  
Gwen sees Ben smile at his boots, and Charles’ brow furrows.  
“Don’t let us keep you from the road, Ben. There’s another storm on the way, after all, and I imagine Margaret will want to be home with Josh when it hits.” Gwen says, fixing Bridgid with a stern look.  
“True. After the desert, I’d be glad of a shower or two, eh Charles? Out here, you wouldn’t believe the dryness of the air, it sucks the moisture clear out of your skin. Of course, humour as dry as Bridgid’s, dry as a desert snake, she wouldn’t have a thing to worry about, would you?” He tips his lid at Bridgid, as he turns to go down the steps.  
“Not a thing once you’re gone, no.” If Bridgid was four years younger, she’d storm inside, and slam the door behind, just to have a second to think, if it were not for the church hall full of the neighbours, all sipping on their tea and nibbling at their shortcakes. She’s not four years younger anymore, and so she holds the railing and smiles, as if he were the one person in the world that she’d been waiting to see.  
He straightens, and for a second, she thinks he’s going to turn. If he was four years younger, he might have. But he’s not, anymore, and he’s quick on his feet, and he strides down the lane to fetch the buggy, dust kicking up by his feet, like he’s not a care in the world.   
“Tea, Charles?” Gwen asks, and they go in, leaving her on the verandah. The first drops of rain start to drum on the roof. Ben doesn’t stop. Bridgid shakes her head, and watches him go. He’ll be drenched by the time he reaches home, but she sees him doff his hat, and turn his face to the sky, and she can’t leave. His shirt is sticking to his back, and he’s spinning, arms out, like a kid.   
She can hear voices from the hall, but it’s not until she hears her name that she concentrates enough to make the words out.   
“A double wedding? Charles, I think that’s a trifle ambitious. You saw how she was to him just then. Bridgid doesn’t feel like that about him. I don’t care how much he said he loves her. Bridgid doesn’t love him. Let them just continue insulting each other. It’s not like you and Gwen.” Phillip says. “He’ll be over it soon enough, presumably. Perhaps he’ll marry Margaret. Isn’t that how things go with the Germans? Ignorant swine.”   
Bridgid imagines she can hear Gwen’s startle from the verandah, at the harshness in Phillip’s voice. He doesn’t deserve to be spoken about like that by his commanding officer. Has he spoken like that to Ben for the last four years? She looks, but the buggy’s disappearing into the blurring rain. She can imagine him standing next to her still, on the verandah, but she can’t imagine those words coming in his voice. That he loves her. He doesn’t.   
“There’s no point in even showing her them,” Griff says dismissively. “She’d rip them to shreds. Better that she doesn’t know. She’d rip him to shreds too.”  
“It’s not your decision to make,” and that’s her aunt’s voice. “None of you should be talking about Ben and Bridgid while they’re not here. I’d like you to stop. Confine the discussion at hand to Charles and Gwen. An engagement deserves some attention, and I’m sure the district would like to celebrate. No, Phillip, not at your house. Just here in the church hall, I think.”  
Bridgid shakes her head clear, and swallows. He doesn’t love her. There’s no proof. He couldn’t possibly. You don’t call the woman you love a dried up desert snake. Or old. He hadn’t even called her ‘old girl’. That face, there, without the smile, with the level eyebrows, and the hundred yard stare, wasn’t the one that kissed her back. It’s impossible.   
By the time she’s inside, Charles is back to talking about his war glory, and Gwen doesn’t look as if she is engaged, sitting quietly in a corner, with a cup of tea sitting in a small puddle of tea in the saucer, with her mother talking animatedly at her. Major Pip walking up and down and she can picture him ordering the troops around, and it’s working on her uncle, she can tell. Griff’s looking happier than any of them. “Congratulate your cousin, Bridg, for she and Charles are to be married!”


	48. August 1919, the Darling Downs, Jimbour church hall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just a cricket match. It's just a wedding. Gwen wishes to be elsewhere.

The skies are blue, the sun is steaming hot, and Major Pip’s back to ordering around his cricket team. Jock is visibly fuming, and Charles is captain. Jack didn’t even ask, he’s on the other team, headed up by one of the graziers taking the day off. Gwen watches from the church hall verandah, with a cup of tea in her hands, so that she doesn’t scream. There’s a corella nesting in the old gum by the hall, and it is intermittently head out and head in. She has no such luxury. This whole day is her engagement party, morphed from a dance, into a day for the lads, at Charles’ suggestion, and Phillip’s backing. Good for the district, he’d said, and her aunt had nodded.   
The whole town is here, one way or another, either on the field, or inside serving up tea and cake, a small part of it baked by Gwen, and Bridgid, but the majority, surprisingly by Margaret and Frau Baumgartner, who seem to have inserted themselves into all the preparations, from the baking of sultana cake, to the brewing of an immense urn of tea, and hanging the hall with bunting, patriotic Union Jack flavoured bunting supplied by the Major rather than the orange flowers, fresh scented and white and bridal, that she’d have preferred. It feels very much like this day is not about her at all, but the role she’ll be stepping into, the equivalent of the matron of the hospital, and that role is an important thing, for the running of the town. So she smiles sweetly, and shakes the hands of all the wishers well, and says nothing out of place. She can’t help where her thoughts take her.   
The garden she pictures is green, year round, except when it’s covered in snow, and the flowers that twine themselves around it may have thorns, but they’re red as Clementine’s lips, and she’d kiss Clementine until she swooned, and she’d share a rug against the cold in front of the fire, one rug only, and she’d keep Clementine warm, warm and safe. They’d have a little vegetable patch, with a glass house to grow tomatoes safe from the frost and snow, and running beans, year round. Clementine would remember everything, and they’d make new memories that stuck.  
Bridgid nudges her. “Clap. He’s just hit a six.”  
She does, and sees the Major looking back up at her, eyes shaded, and nodding in approval. She waves her hand to acknowledge the nod. This is her life now, standing still, and smiling until her face hurts, and the dry sere grass, no rain for the last three weeks since the thunderstorm, and the corellas, head in, head out.   
“Pretend it’s a shift. More tea, Missus MacKenzie?”  
She watches Bridge serve the tea, cut the cake (the fourth for Mrs MacKenzie, not that she’s counting, but where is the food going?) as if she’s watching a film spool out. Bridgid smiles, politely, and watches the older woman go. “This is your almost special day, remember. Is there anything here you can find to be happy about?”   
Gwen thinks. “The fact that there’s no mud, perhaps? No one’s bleeding or requiring reassurance that they’re not going to die? There’s no shells burst in the sky like death?”  
Bridgid puts her hand on Gwen’s arm. The room is staring, full of eyes, and turned faces, and she’s said that a little loud, perhaps.   
“I mean, I’m so grateful to have them home, and so proud, so very proud, of all our soldiers, including our dear departed.” She declaims, in a voice that would have made matron proud.   
Conversation resumes.   
Bridgid’s hand moves to her elbow. She wheels Gwen into a more private corner of the hall and whispers. “They know. Someone’s going to say something, to the Major, or to Charles. Especially if you do that. You should just tell them, now. I can do it first, if you like. There’s no marriage prospects for me at risk, nothing for me to lose. You’re as pale as a ghost.”  
She hisses at Bridgid. “Don’t you say a word. My father’s told me what he wants me to do, and I’m doing it. Don’t you dare tell me what to do, too. You’re supposed to be, what, supportive, as a matron of honour, right? This is what I’m asking you to do.”  
Bridgid pulls Gwen in for a loose embrace, and Gwen feels rigid, like a statue. Bridgid kisses her on the cheek, and looks at her, bemused. The Gwen of old, that Bridgid knows, would never have pushed back, would have allowed herself to be guided, no, directed by Bridgid. She straightens her dress, pulling the crisp linen pleats down, adjusts the bodice where it’s been flattened by Bridgid. “Whatever you need, Gwen. Whatever you need.”  
Gwen smiles, slightly. Gravely. “I need this. It’s what’s best.”  
Bridgid looks at her, and slightly shakes her head. “It’s your funeral. I mean, wedding.”  
“Serve the tea.”   
They return to the tea counter, to find that Frau Baumgartner has beat them to it. “You’re too kind,” Gwen says.  
“Nonsense,” Frau Baumgartner says. “You’ve looked after everyone long enough, and the Major is paying the Baumgartner matriarch not only for the food, but also for the management, and so, here I am. Time to look after yourself. Bridgid, liebling, take Josh from Margaret for a moment will you? He’s over tired. Take him down to the cricket grounds, for it’s the end of the innings, isn’t it? Perhaps take some tea down to Ben.”  
Frau Baumgartner unceremoniously hands a mug of tea to Gwen, for Charles, and a mug of tea to Bridgid, and Bridgid, nonplussed, takes it, and Gwen is briefly amused, for where is the snappy remark, the snide comment about Ben being unable to fetch even a mug of tea for himself, but Bridgid is taking the mug, and allowing herself to be directed. Even collecting Josh, who is as grumpy as promised, and grabs a handful of her hair and directs her that she should find him a bat, for he would hit it ever as hard as his Uncle Ben. She watches Bridgid flush.   
At ground level, Josh breaks free, and trots over to his uncle, finding a knee with both arms, and placing his head between them, until Ben picks him up by his waist and turns him upside down, and when he’s back the right way up he’s giggling and red faced and asks for more, more, more now until Ben picks him and tosses him casually in the air once, twice and three times, with tiny Josh giggles punctuating each catch.   
“Stop that now, do. Josh will be sick and all that cake he’s eaten will go to waste, won’t it Josh?” Bridgid says, and Ben does, tousling the brown messy hair as he grabs Bridgid’s skirts for balance.   
“Nonsense, old girl. Baumgartner stomachs are famed for their strength. Do you know, Josh,” and Ben lowers himself to the ground, crossing his long legs on the spiky grass with ease, much to Gwen’s envy, encased in white linen that cannot be sat upon, lest it crease. “Your father once ate a piece of beef that was three weeks old. Had to cut the outer layer off, and there were maggots, but he kept that down no problem. Another of the fellows lost a piece of tooth to the army biscuits that we were rationed, hard as nails they were. But Baumgartner teeth are tougher. They’d win against a Jones cake, no problem.”   
The small boy taps his teeth. “I’m tough, too, right Uncle?”  
Ben pulls the child gently into his lap. “As tough as they come.”   
Down the grassy level, Charles greets her with a sweaty, and sloppy kiss on the cheek, and spills half the tea before he drinks any. There’s spirits on his breath, and she doesn’t want to know where from. When pressed, she affirms that yes, she saw the six, and it was splendid, well done you, and that she’ll be on the balcony for the second innings, watching him take wickets. The Major complains that he hasn’t been brought tea, and she thinks briefly about bringing him one, as she would to a fretful patient on the ward, then rethinks, as he continues to bark orders at the younger members of the team, barring Charles, who has now gently ambled off to the hall to relieve himself, presumably, and Ben, who is still tumbling with his nephew. Duty done, she retreats.   
At the foot of the stairs to the hall, Gwen watches Bridgid watching the two heads close together, and sees Ben look up at her, and she hands him the tea, and she’s saying something, there’s some smart quip she’s making, and Ben’s not speaking. Just looking up at her, and she’s not close enough to see anything more. Sees, too, Ben’s hand linger on Bridgid’s, on the mug handle, and the colour flush on her cousin’s neck, and Ben’s, and Gwen turns away.   
Jack is beside her, arms folded, watching Major Pip running some of the young men through a drill, c’mon Jock, hit it straight for once in your blooming life, and put your back to it. Jack’s face is still, and he’s not smiling, but he’s not scowling either.   
“Shall I fetch you some tea too?” Gwen offers, into the silence.   
Jack turns, and she can see the smile being applied. “Tea? No, I’m right. But thanks. Didn’t imagine this would be your idea of an engagement party. Bet it was the Major’s, right?”  
Gwen looks at her cup, and swirls it. “It honestly doesn’t matter. It’s all a lot of fuss one way or another. For nothing, really.”  
Jack whistles. “You’re a girl and a half. The Gwen I knew five years ago would have dreamed up a dance, and flowers, and coloured bunting and the whole palaver. And here you are, watching a bunch of mugs play cricket, like it’s nothing to do with you at all. You’re getting married to that great galoot,” and they pause, to watch Charles roll on the ground, with a particularly daring save, and tumble over himself, stand and throw the ball in the air with a shout. “It’s none of my business, I’m sure. It just galls me, is all. Having to organise a cricket match for a bunch of buffoons. And how ridiculous it is. I mean, this time last year, I wouldn’t have given odds on coming home in one piece, or at all. And here we are playing cricket, like nothing’s happened. Nothing at all. It’s ridiculous. Oh, look. Don’t mean to upset you, and it’s not fair to tell you all this. I mean, you were here, it’s different.”  
She sips the tea, and puts the cup back in the saucer. “I can’t bring myself to care, quite frankly. Not after, well, everything. D’you know,” and the tea spills a fraction. “The last thing I had to organise was a hospital evacuation. Beds, and wounded soldiers, and medical supplies, and who went first and with whom. Who had to be constantly monitored, and who had only to be looked in on in a railway carriage once every couple of hours, and then worry whether I’d triaged wrong. I can assure you that flowers, and colours and dancing, had nothing to do with it. Only death. So, no. I can look at these foolish chaps and count myself lucky that these ones are dead, or dying or wounded, and I’m not thinking about the what comes after, because it doesn’t matter. None of this matters anymore.”  
Jack’s hand takes the saucer, and sets it carefully down on the grass. He fishes out a handkerchief, and hands it to her, carefully, and she notices her hands are shaking again. He takes out a hipflask, and unscrews it, and tips a wee bit into her tea, and takes a sip himself.   
“I find this steadies the nerves a wee bit more than tea. France, was it? I was in France. It was pretty enough at the beginning, and there were flowers, and colours, and even a bit of dancing. But I understand. You understand. Everything that happens now matters, because we’re not dead. We’re only here playing cricket because the Major wanted us to. You don’t have to do this just because you’re not dead. D’you understand? I’ve got my papers, and I’m going to be on the road after you’re wed, see you off properly, finish my time here off with a bang, and all that. See a bit of Australia, might find myself settled down near old Bluey, take the government up on their settlement scheme, it’s the least they can well do. Mind, if you find you can’t quite stomach my brother, you’ve only to tip me the nod, and I’ll see what I can do. Mind me?”  
She holds the handkerchief tightly. In the distance, the Major is barking orders, tea time is up, time for the second innings. “Thank you. Thanks, Jack. You’d better go. Pass me the cup?”  
He does, and then passes her a lazy, sloppy, too tired to count, salute, which she acknowledges with a small nod, and takes his place on the bench, waiting for his turn at bat, alongside Blinky, and studiously ignoring the fielders, who are mocking them, confident in their approach. Charles places an arm about her waist, squeezing her uncomfortably, and kisses her on the other cheek. “Smashing good game, eh? Sorry Gwen, duty calls!” He’s off again. The girl she’d been would have blushed for a solid five minutes, and imagined knights and castles. The girl she is now wipes down her cheek, wet where he’s kissed her, and roughened by his stubble, and is trying not to imagine anything at all.   
Gwen watches Bridgid for a minute, who is fully occupied with the dual duties of watching both the Baumgartner junior, and every so often the Baumgartner senior, the Baumgartner junior throwing a spare ball in the air, and to Bridgid, and attempting daring last minute catches, which goes as well as Gwen expects it will, particularly given Bridgid is attempting to give half her attention to Ben, stretching on the field, his shoulders straining the fabric, bending to touch his toes, and the fabric of his trousers only just meeting the challenge, and the grin he shoots Bridgid, when he turns, and tosses her a cheeky wave, that tells Gwen that he’s fully aware of her gaze. Is deliberately courting it. It’s unbearable.  
“Josh, I think your mum is looking for you. Let’s go see if we can find her, eh?” Gwen calls, and Bridgid startles.   
“Yes. Let’s find mum, Josh. You can show her your catching?”   
Josh approves of this idea, although he improves on it by asking for cake. Sultana cake. He knows everything that’s been baked for the event, and has plans to sample them all.   
After the handoff, she’s sent to the balcony to watch the cricket again, and Bridgid with her. The corella has taken refuge fully inside the gum, and the heat haze rises above the grass. There’s too much light to see properly, for a minute.  
On the bench, Jack tosses a ball from one hand to another, and studiously ignores his father, out on the pitch, barking at the fielders, who move like marionettes, even Ben, from one position to another, circling in on the batters like waiting sharks. Jock’s two down from him, but he can hear the low steady cursing.   
Blinky nudges Jock. “It’s a bloody game, mate. Just hit the fucking ball and run a couple of yards. You remember how to do that, don’t you, soldier? Forget that flamin’ Pommie pretender and just hit the effing ball.”  
Jock stands. “You know what, I’ve had a gutful of this. Major bloody Phillip can take his cricket bat and shove it where the sun don’t shine. I’m going out there and I’m going to put the ball right between his bleedin’ eyes. See how the fuck he likes that.”  
Blue whistles between his teeth. “See, Jack old boy, this is why you don’t serve with people from back home. You saved yourself a real piece of trouble there not working with your turkey of a father. And you, Jock. It’s a fucking cricket match. I don’t care who he got killed, it’s a fucking cricket match, for that nice sheila up on the balcony, you remember her, don’t you? Just go out there and hit the fucking ball, you useless piece of camel rectum.”  
Jack thinks, for a second, that Jock’s face is going to implode, or that he’s going to take his cricket bat to them all, sat in a row, for he takes in a deep breath, until his face turns red, and holds it, and holds it, until he erupts in a violent burst of laughter, worse than any kookaburra, and disrupting play, as Charles, mid run up, stops, and looks at them, hands on his hips, every inch the disapproving gentleman. Jock’s laugh is infectious, travelling the range from the belly laugh, to the snort, to the tiny little giggle, and they’re all on the grass by the time they laugh themselves out. “Fucking camel rectum,” Bluey whispers, and Blinky laugh snorts, and the youngsters who didn’t leave Australia, and wouldn’t swear in a month of Sundays for fear of their mother’s soap bars, hold their sides and cry mercy.  
“God,” Jock says, more soberly. “I needed that. Should have shipped out with you boys. Camel rectum. Can’t even compete with that, not even going to try. It was my brother, Stephen. Following stupid bloody orders, and I reckon you know how that goes, yeah?”  
They nod, and the youngsters watch on, intent on picking up any last scrap of warlore that they can scrape from the conversation.   
Jack clears his throat, and the eyes turn to him. “Let’s give Gwen a good send off, chaps. And if we happen to rub Major Phillip’s nose in a huge loss, that’d be fine with me.”  
The youngsters applaud. Jock looks at him, and Jack can pinpoint the moment at which Jock remembers that Major Phillip’s another name for Jack’s father, and Jack shrugs. “Make them hurt for it, at least, if we can’t win. Belt it out into the boundaries, in the long grass. They’re not on horses now.”


	49. 1 September 1919, Spring dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridgid is making a new start.

There’s a cluster of girls at the entrance of the hall, and Bridgid swears that she remembers teaching some of them as tiny tots in Sunday School, a million years ago, before the war, and now they’re here with hair coiled, and frilled dresses, tightly sewn around the bodice, and giggling over boys that she remembers as having had issues with the ABCs. She’s in her best blue dress, and it’s faded, and worn, and in a month from this dance, Gwen will be wed to Charles, and she’ll need to move to Brisbane, for her uncle will be giving up the lease, or sub-leasing it to the Major, if he has his way.   
The Major’s not here tonight, nor Charles, nor Gwen, nor her aunt or uncle, for they are all in Dalby to have the wedding papers drawn up, and wills changed, and so on, all the paperwork for which lawyers and accountants and bankers are needed. Her horse is tied out the back of the church hall, and she’s her own house key tucked into her bodice. Tonight she’s not going home. She’ll have to return the horse to her uncle’s in the morning, before they return.   
The last month, for every hour that she spends sewing Gwen’s dowry, or helping her aunt to plan Gwen’s wedding breakfast, she’s slipped out, on the brown mare, and down the west lane to her own house. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The paint on the inside is untouched, it’s only the outside that needs patching and that’s a matter of detail, not substance. There’s been no leaks, she finds once she breaks in, although it’s not breaking in if it’s your own house. Nothing is missing. She creates a cache of comfortable working clothes, light skirts, and slacks that she’s made for herself, to Gwen’s design, and sloughs off the sensible sister of the bride clothes she’s being made to wear at present, for the practical, when she arrives. There’s no one there to see, after all, as anyone who once used to visit her seems to have forgotten the address.   
Outside needs more work. The grapevine has, sometime in the last five years, assumed control of the trellises, to the detriment of the ornamental roses, such that come picking time, she’ll be pricked all over, if she doesn’t cut into the tangle now. She finds, and sharpens, her mother’s old secateurs. When she’s finished, she has a fine amount of dry wood for kindling, and some bonus raisins, which she saves for Josh. Josh will appreciate them more than she will. She can give them to him on Sunday when she sees him at church, little toddler legs kicking against the pew, for she doesn’t go to the Baumgartners anymore. Not now he’s home.  
There are tomato seedlings everywhere, and although she tries to harden her heart, and pull out any beyond the weedpatch she’s trying to turn back into her vegetable garden, she can’t bring herself to do it, and the earthy smell that sticks to her skirts when she brushes past their leaves is fruit enough for now. She’d harvested the plums when she first came home, and now they’re flowering again, pink paper like petals all over the ground, and the bees buzzing warmly, keeping the wasps at bay. Margaret had said that they enjoyed her plumcake. She hadn’t made it for him, after all. He’ll make a fine husband for Margaret, and Josh needs a father.   
The kale and cabbage have gone to seed, and grown, and gone to seed, and grown, all throughout the lawn, beyond the confines of the good soil, as if they were spoiling for a fight. Something has burrowed into the patch methodically and removed all the sweet carrots, but the lack of carrots is likely made up for by the excess of pumpkin vines that she removes. She’ll be making pumpkin preserves for hours, come summer, and the sweet candy paste that she will deny that she loves, that she learnt of in Alexandria. She has a dwindling amount of cinnamon left, and then she’ll have no way to buy more.   
If her uncle has his way, she’ll be long gone, with someone else in her house, going forward, and the chance that her garden will die and wither, as the seasons take it, if it’s let to the graziers, or to the Major. If her uncle has his way, since she didn’t marry some fool of a Richard, or Hugh, or Sebastian, or any of the other blue shirted, well dressed, cardboard cut out lads Charles brought out on break, she’s to be gone. She sets her shoulders firmly, and stiffens her spine against it.  
She’s not meant to be here at all tonight. She’s been told, sternly, by Griff, and then by Imogen, that she should spend her free time writing letters to potential employers. There was a list of exclusive girls’ schools that might be in want of boarding school mistresses, or teachers, or could recommend governess positions. Then there’s the names of hospitals, who may take her on as a nursing student. There is a far distant relation who may feel kindly enough to put her up for a week or so, to find her feet. It’s almost kind of her aunt and uncle to have made the list, and she should think it kind of them to have advanced her the money for the train fare, and for two weeks’ lodging, to be used after Gwen leaves to the big house in October, to start her new life as a mannequin for the Major and his son, who she is now convinced has been sheltered in some position or other throughout the war, no other explanation. She hates them all, save Gwen of course.  
What she did instead of writing those letters was rummage about, carefully so that she could put it back as if undisturbed, in her uncle’s rolltop desk until she found her father’s will, and she has it neatly cached in her saddlebag. She took her time in reading it over, with the aid of a strong cup of tea, and the quiet of the undisturbed afternoon with clouds over the horizon, and no voices to disturb her puzzling out her future. She has her majority, and the will is clear, there’s no codicil entitling her uncle to dispose of her property. Indeed, the income from her father’s farm, after paying the tithe to the bank and the landlord, is hers, to do with as she wills. She’s checked her uncle’s ledgers, and he’s kept them separate, and indeed there has been profit, and he’s banked it all. She’s written a very clear letter, and kept a copy for herself, which she’ll take to a solicitor if needs be, that sets out that she is reclaiming her house, her farm, her land, and she’ll be expecting her uncle to deposit what’s hers (and here she’s made deductions that she would expect him to claim for board and keep) into her bank account directly. She’s kept it as business like as she could, although her earlier drafts were twitching with vitriol, for the sake of her cousin.  
She’s unpacked her bags, in which she’s taken everything that she can legitimately call her own, plus a loaf of bread, and a cupful of starter, into the main bedroom of her house. The walls are presently cream, and stained, and cobwebbed, but if she lies on the bed, which creaks satisfyingly as she moves, and closes her eyes, she can imagine them the light green of the gum leaves that she wanted to paint them. She’ll paint them soon enough, she promises herself, once she wins this battle, and after she buys a cow, and chickens, and baling wire, and seed, and all the needful things. She’s walked her house over, and opened the windows, to let the fresh air in, closed them now against the chill of the spring air. Tomorrow, she has a full day of work to do. She should be asleep in the creaky bed, in the cream room.   
She shouldn’t be here, except that she’s itchy with the need to move, and keep moving, to stop thinking about the future, and the need to burn it out of her. Jack appears before her, and she can’t hear him over the fiddle, and the echoes, so she takes his hand and allows herself to be thrown into the maelstrom of bouncing, and making the wood bend under foot. It’s a rush, and her skirt flounces as she twirls down the line, from Jack, to Jock, to Angus, and then the music stops, and she’s left with hands on hips, chest heaving, and heart racing, and she can feel the sweat trickling down her back and she doesn’t care. There’s no one there to rein her in, no one she needs to watch over, for Gwen’s shaking hands are under the watch of her parents, and no one who’ll interrupt with news of patients coming in to tend to, and no one’s going to die tonight. The last time that she felt like this was, she recalls, more than five years ago, when she sat in the big house and listened to the piano rip pieces of her soul out and show them to her, stained with her own blood. The hall is full, and the music starts up again, and this time she watches, shaking her head at Angus, who moves on to one of his sisters, and dances out into the mass. Her breath is stuck somewhere in her throat, and she’s feeling tears prick at the back of her eyes, for there’s no reason why she should be here, and whole, and alive, and all those boys she treated, the missing legs, the death, not. The graziers have a whole third of the floor locked down, and are swinging their partners from one to another, with boots stomping in between. There’s Blinky, dancing with Lyndall, and Bluey making Susie’s skirts swirl somewhere in the middle. Jock’s onto dance partner number five. Jack’s at the refreshment station fetching Susie a drink, and if Susie’s husband’s not here, that’s not her problem to worry about. The floor is heaving with bodies, and they’re alive, and so is she, and there’s absolutely no reason why she should be crying.  
The balcony is cool, and dark, and she wipes her face, her cheeks down, and blows her nose, noisily, for there’s no need to dissemble in the dark, alone. When she emerges from behind her handkerchief, she’s not.   
“Don’t tell me. You’ve cried like this all through the war.” It’s Ben, and his gently mocking voice makes her feel like punching him.   
“Yes, you’ve found me out. This is exactly where I’ve been the last four years, crying and waiting for you to come back. Is that what you’d have liked?” She refuses to look. She wipes her nose, pointedly.  
“Oh. So these tears are for me then?” She’s not going to look.  
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just tired. You know how us frail women get. Etcetera.” The night is cool and dark, and she lets the breeze sting at the corners of her eyes.  
“Funny. I’ve heard that you’ve travelled the world. Alexandria and Greece, I’ve been told. And a simple country dance exhausts you? Not the girl I knew.”   
She does turn at that. “Keep your voice down. Who did you hear that from?” she hisses.  
“Margaret and my mother, of course. Why on earth would that be a secret? You should be proud, it’s a fine thing that you’ve done.”  
“Put a lid on it. Am I to tell you that you should be proud of what you’ve done? Is that what we’re doing now? A mutual admiration society? Please. Stop. And don’t tell Charles and the Major.”  
“Why on earth?”  
“Because of Gwen, of course. If they find out about me, they’ll find out about her, and France, and not everyone thinks it’s something of which to be proud. Not future Mrs Charles material. Please.”   
He rocks back on one heel, looking her over. “I reckon you’re right. I do. You’re on. I’ll keep your secret. Now you do something for me.”  
She bristles. “This isn’t a dare. It’s not something I’m trading off here. I’m not. What is it you could possibly want, Baumgartner?”  
“Dance with me. You’ve danced with everyone else here.” She can’t see his eyes, for he’s silhouetted against the light of the hall.  
“You should be dancing with Margaret. Aren’t you meant to be marrying her, after all, isn’t that how it works?” She can’t help the way her throat is closing up.   
He snorts. “Don’t know where on earth you got that from. For a start, Margaret’s at home, sitting this one out. For a second, there’s but one Baumgartner boy for Margaret anymore, and he doesn’t come up to my waist. She’s the one fellow kind. For a third, even if she wasn’t, I’m not for her.”  
“Lyndall then.” She frowns.   
“I don’t want to dance with Lyndall. Even if I did, I reckon that grazier might have something to say to me on that subject.” The couple in question surge out of the door, and seeing the way the fellow has Lyndall’s hand in his grasp, and Lyndall blushing to her ears, Bridgid cedes the point.  
“You called me old.”  
“I meant you’d grown up. It’s a good thing.” He steps further back, so he can look her over, and he does, from her sensible dancing shoes, to her blue dress, and she hopes he can’t see the mended patches under her arms, and at the hems. “It’s a very good thing.”  
She stows the handkerchief into the pocket at her waist band. Wipes her hands down the back of her skirt. Tells herself to stop overthinking things, that she came here for a dance, for one last hoorah before she knuckles down to the hard work of fighting her uncle and running a farm with no help.   
“Remember how much you hate me? Desert snake, you called me?”  
“So, I’m a masochist and an idiot, and I’m sorry.” He holds out a hand, and it looks steady enough.   
“One dance, then I’m going home. If you can stop talking now before you make it any worse.”  
He laughs, then takes her chin in his fingers, and holds her face still, his face solemn. She remembers what his lips felt like five years ago, and wonders if he’s going to kiss her and tries not to hold her breath.  
“Whatever you want.”  
His hand, when she takes it is warm, and one dance turns into dancing with him for the rest of the night, the fast ones, with joined hands in the air, and pulse throbbing, and heads turned to the leaders, and the slow ones, where she can feel every one of his fingers on the small of her back, tracing gently along her spine, shivers in their wake. Jock taps him out, after a time, for a reel, and he dances with Lyndall, the graziers having a spell on the verandah with a smoke, and her skirts fly just the same way as when he’s spinning her, but Jock laughs at the end, when the dance finishes, and she’s confused, until she finds Ben behind her, hand on her waist, and whisking her out for another. In the next, Angus taps Ben on the shoulder, and Ben pretends not to notice, and she laughs, as Ben swirls her back into the crowd.   
He fetches her water, and a slice of Susie’s lemon cake, sticky with syrup, when she cries mercy after two hours of dancing. His shoulder is still a comfortable place to rest her head, she discovers, and he’s warm, and the breeze on the verandah is cold. She’s thinking about how to engineer his arms about her again, for more than one reason, when the graziers come out, each replacing their hats on their heads.   
“Mr Green, is it?” she calls, stepping forward, and out of Ben’s orbit.   
She sees the lead one look about a trifle, before he finds where she is.   
“Miss Jones, is it? Sorry love, too late for a dance,” he calls, and his companions chuckle amongst themselves.  
“I wanted to let you know that I’m taking back my farm. That’s the west Jones farm. I know my uncle has an arrangement with you, but that’s to end now. Will next month be soon enough to move your sheep?” She’s proud of the fact that her voice isn’t wavering, and puts it down to the ward sister’s training. She can feel Ben stepping up behind her, body warmth and all, and a hand gentle, on her hip, as if they’re still dancing, and the grazier nods at him.   
He tips his hat at her. “Should be. I’ll tell the boys.”   
It’s as simple as that, she finds, watching them wander around the corner. The first step to independence, and irrevocable change, and it wasn’t as hard as she’d imagined. She takes a deep breath of the night air, and looks up at the stars, cloud blowing across the moon, and feels two feet taller. She can feel Ben’s chest against her back now, and his hand still on her hip and the strength of it is comforting. Tomorrow, she’ll be facing her uncle without, and she’s not as certain that it will run as smoothly as tonight.  
The dance is now properly over, with people spilling out into the dark, and their horses, and buggies, and the night, and they stand on the verandah and watch them go, until the deacon locks the hall and shoos them out.   
Ben’s been silent since she asked him to, and she can feel his eyes on her now, as they unhobble their horses, and saddle up. She doesn’t mind. She’ll have to explain it all tomorrow in any case.  
“I’ve left my uncle’s, and I’ve moved into my house. That’s all. I’ve my father’s will, and there’s nothing in it that gives me any pause. My life’s my own, and the lease is mine, and I’ve the documents to prove it. And that’s all there is to say.” She puts a foot in the stirrup and a hand on the pommel and she’s up, looking down.   
“Ride you home, then? It’s a long one in the dark, and it’ll be easier with company. Surely.” He says, looking up. Waiting.  
She thinks briefly about arguing. She thinks about the warmth of his chest. She thinks about the graziers, who she doesn’t know all that well, and the house that she’ll be all alone in.   
“Fine. Mount up, Lighthorseman.”   
He’s quicker at it than she, and than he used to be. She thinks about asking him to show her just how fast he can ride now, betting she can beat him, but it’s dark, and she’s tired, and it can wait.   
The horses amble in the starlight, the gravel crunching underfoot. She’s half asleep in the saddle, lulled by the sway, and her mind is finally blank, the circles spiralled down to a standstill.  
“What do you need, Bridge?” She’s surprised by the sound of his voice, and it takes her a good second to place herself, the smell of the air, the horse between her legs, the last time she’d fallen asleep mid thought was likely holding a bandage during an operation, and been shouted at after by the ward sister.  
“Honestly, I need a plan. Not that it’s any of your business, but,” and he interrupts.   
“You know it is my business. And if you don’t, you should. A plan, then. Starting at the top, feeding yourself. The Baumgartners find themselves blessed with an excess of hens, at present, and would cordially invite you to take a loan, until you have chicks of your own. And a cow. You’ll need a cow. Moving to the next, the future. The paddocks you’re taking back. Are you proposing to plant them out, or run sheep yourself? Different kinds of loans, different kinds of workers, you’d need. I’d ask you what you have in the bank, but you’d tell me to boil my head. I’d tell you what I have in mine, but it’s late, and I’m tired, and you’re tired, and I can’t recall what’s in my account and what’s in the one for Mutti, and Margaret and little Josh. It’s going to be fine. Whatever you need. And you’re crying again. Promise me that you’ll have a big drink of water when you’re in your house. You do have water, don’t you? Did I tell you about the time when we had no water for two days? I let my horse drink out of my hat, when we got there. I did tell you that, I think.”  
She shakes her head at him, and then wonders how he can see in the dark when she can’t. “You’ve told me nothing. All I know is that you’ve been gone, and that you’ve come back. I can guess most of the rest, I think. Since we’re talking again, I want to say that I’m very sorry about Wilhelm. We all miss him, and I can’t guess what it was like. I’m honestly sorry for that.”   
They ride in silence down the last of the road, and she can’t see his face. The evening is too silent.  
“Here’s my lane, and I’m not crying anymore. Thanks for the dance, and thanks for the company. I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I don’t have any.”  
He snorts. “I shall add tea to your list of things that you are going to borrow, if you’re willing to take the offer. Are you sure you want to stay here tonight, by yourself?”  
She can’t see his eyes under the shadow of his hat. “Yes. I’m sure. Besides, you can’t stay here with me. Fate worse than death, remember?” She says it as levelly as she can muster.   
There’s silence. She can hear her heart beating in her ears, hear her breathing, while she waits for him to say or do anything at all.  
“What I remember is years of wishing that I’d been that lucky. I meant more whether you wanted to come to the Baumgartners, which has an abundance of proper behaviour monitors, and at least one sofa that I can sleep on. But we are here now, so I’m going to stay here at the end of the lane, until you’ve taken the horse to the stable, and gone inside the house, and locked your door, and lit your lamp, and then I’m going to go. I’ll be back in the morning, with tea, and a chicken, and perhaps a cow, and if you like, pencils and paper, and assistance for you in making a plan, and taking the horse back to your uncle’s, yes?”  
She nods. What she wants to say, is stay. What she wants to do is reach out and grab the bridle and pull his horse close enough to hers that she can lean over and take off his hat, and kiss him.  
“Thanks for the ride,” she manages, and pulls the horse to turn into the lane.  
“Thanks for the dance,” he calls, as the horse ambles its way along, both too slow and too fast for her liking, and when she reaches the end, at the turn for the stable, she can see that he’s still watching, centaurlike.  
The horse whickers quietly into the haystall, and she’s glad she took the time to fill it earlier, for it’s full dark in the stable now. She shuts the gate for the home paddock behind her. He’s still, she finds, at the end of the lane, and she waves, and he waves back.  
The key’s hard to turn in the lock, and she fumbles it in the dark. Manages it on the second try. Locks it behind her. The lamp’s in the kitchen, and the matches too. She takes them both into the living room and lights it, this time on the first try. She can’t tell, the light in her eyes, whether he’s out there still or not.   
The house is still and quiet, and if she holds her breath, she fancies she can hear him riding away. The bed squeaks when she climbs in, and through the window she can see the stars.

In the morning, after she’s ridden the mare to her uncle’s and walked the miles afoot before the suns up, he brings Margaret, and Josh. The instant he clambers out of the buggy, all little legs, Josh darts for the orchard, with shouts of “Trees, Tante Bridgid. You have trees!”.   
Margaret kisses her on both cheeks, and Bridgid returns the favour, and Ben can see, if he turns his head, Margaret holding both Bridgid’s hands, with a smirk, explaining that she’s to chaperone, at Mutti’s insistence, because if one Baumgartner boy jumped early, Mutti’s not trusting the other one to bide his time. Hears, to his surprise, Bridgid laughing, and he’s not game to look at her either.   
“Margaret, we don’t need a chaperone. Go get your son out of my fruit trees.” Bridgid says, but she’s opening the front door to Margaret as she does so, which undercuts the message in Ben’s eyes.   
Margaret sits herself down in the living room. “I can see him from here. If you make me a cup of tea, you can stay in the kitchen where I can’t see you.” She holds out a small box of tea, and a bottle of milk.   
Bridgid sighs. But she puts the kettle back to the stove, and stirs the stove fire. It’s as good an opening as he’s going to get, so he pulls a chair out, and sits to the kitchen table. He’s brushed his hair, although you couldn’t tell to look at him, the hat and his nephew having undone any good work that might have had any effect. He’s shaved himself well enough, so that Josh pronounces him slippery. He’s wearing his best shirt. He has a book of plain paper, and an outline of figures, prices, and a slide rule, all of which he pushes across the table to her, and she takes a seat, and stacks them neatly, opening the pages of numbers and starting to look them over.   
“My mother didn’t ask Margaret to chaperone. I did.”   
She looks up. Her hair is only half neat this morning, the plaits looped across the back of her head, and tendrils escaping and curling in the heat, and he wants to twine one around his fingers. She’s as pretty in her scruffy work clothes as she’d been in the blue ribboned dress the night before.   
“I don’t want your choices taken away. There may be some who might think that me being here without Margaret would do that. People talk, Bridge, and you danced with me all last night. I mean to be here more often than not, if that would be helpful to you. Someone needs to hold your ladders and mend your rooftops. If I stake you enough for seed for the first crop, we could be partners. Fifty fifty.” He’s not familiar with the tone his voice has taken. He doesn’t recall talking so low and quiet before, like he’s lulling a wayward horse.   
She looks back down at the books, a finger held under the line she’d stopped at.   
“That’s a very kind offer. Seventy thirty would be more reasonable, I’m thinking, if I were to think about it. And what’s Margaret to get from this?” She doesn’t look up, and her finger resumes tracing the numbers that he’s written not an hour before.  
“Margaret gets a cup of tea and the chance to sit down for an hour. Ten minutes of which you’ve used. Wil was faster than this, Ben, you’re using up your time,” a voice sounds from behind him, and he leaps to his feet. The teapot’s where it used to be, and he busies himself with the business of measuring out the tea leaves into the pot, and setting the water to steep.   
She’s stopped reading, he notes when he looks over, and is watching him.   
He waits the allotted time, in silence, her eyes on him, and pours out three cups, one for Margaret, one for Bridgid and one for him, and adds the milk, one, and two, and three, and takes one to Margaret, who thanks him, one eyebrow raised, in a form she’s copied from his mother, and re-enters the kitchen.  
Bridgid’s closed the book. She’s sipping his tea, and she has one eyebrow up also.  
He sits. “What I mean to say, Bridgid, is that I’d like to give you the chance to decide it’s me that you want, rather than having me foisted on you by your uncle. Sixty forty.”  
“Better, Ben,” Margaret says, from the next room, and his cheeks begin to take on a reddish tinge. In his mind, he has a sugar cube in his palm, and he’s holding it out slowly, so as not to startle the horse. The tea is scalding, but he sips it anyway.   
“Let’s see,” she says, slowly, brows drawing close together. “You want us to be partners, and you’re willing to stake me money to buy seed grain. You’re willing to drag along your sister in law when you want to come and fix my roof. You’re sitting there with ears as red as tomatoes, and offering to give me chances. Say what you mean.”   
“Margaret, go find your son for a minute, will you?” He looks down at the table, and waits through the sigh, and the clink of the teacup in the saucer on the coffee table, and the creak of the front door, and it shutting behind her.  
The room is smaller now that there’s only the two of them in it. He can hear her breathing, shallow.   
“It’s good tea,” he says. “Well made.”  
“You brought the tea and you made it. Say what you meant to say and stop talking about the tea.” She picks up her cup, and sips it, looking over the rim at him, big eyes.  
“I want you to marry me. I want you to marry me because you can’t stand the thought of spending your life with anyone else but me, and life’s too short to do without, because that’s the way I feel about you. The seed money comes no strings attached, because that’s the decent thing to do, and you can pay me for it after the harvest if you want to, and we can be business partners alone, and nothing else. But that’s my cards on the table.” He’s out of breath, worse than in the desert, and the air’s run out of the room, now that he’s run out of words.  
She sips her tea again, watching him. Puts the teacup down, centred in the saucer, and pushes the saucer away, white cup on the pine table.  
“So you’re courting me, is it? Like Charles and Gwen?” There’s a note of scorn in her voice, and he’s not sure if it’s aimed at him.  
“A little credit, please.” The words are only slightly bitter in his mouth. “I’m courting you like a Benjamin courts a Bridgid. My way’s a lot more practical, and I’m actually listening to you instead of showing you off like a prize pony.” There’s a little more of a smile now.  
“You’re not doing this just for my farm, then?”   
He can’t help but laugh at this. “Bridge, I’ve likely my hands full with her outside and the wee one, let alone my mother, all with views on what we should all be doing with the Baumgartner farm. Muscling in on the Jones land is the last thing on my mind.   
She stops smiling. “Then you shouldn’t be here. Go home and make sure that you’re doing the right thing by your mother and sister in law. I’ll make my own way.” The tea cup is back in her hands, and she’s turning it slowly, looking into the dregs.  
“You’ll make your own way, with your uncle over here shortly, no doubt, and determined to face them all down. I’ve no doubt you can do it. None. But you don’t have to do it alone. Please let me help. And, you know, if that works out, you could marry me.” Her other hand’s still free, and he captures it. It’s cold when he presses his lips to it, and her eyes flutter closed for a brief moment. She’s tired, he notes. Dark circles under her eyes. Before she can slip her hand free, he places it back down.  
“So. Tell me where I can help first, for I still have half an hour on Margaret’s clock, I’ve said what I wanted to and it’s your turn to think, and I want to help, and I’ve finished my tea.” He stands, at attention, and pauses, waiting for orders. Pushes the chair back under the table.  
She looks at her hand, where he’d kissed it, and rubs it with her thumb. She looks at him, standing expectant, and puts the tea cup down. Stands, and walks the table round, to a position in front of him.   
“Still sounds like a business offer to me, and if that’s the case, I’ll need to go over the numbers again.” She takes a half step forward, close enough to put her hands on his chest, and grab his shirt and pull him close, none of which does she do. He can feel her breathing, and her skirt rubbing up against his trousers, and his breathing appears to have become ragged itself.   
“Bridge. Are you asking me to show you what else I’m offering?” he says, and she laughs a little.   
“I’m daring you to. For all you’re doing is talking,” she says, and it’s invitation enough.   
Her waist is soft under his fingers as he tugs her into him, as close as they were when they were dancing last night, in the crowded hall, and he pauses, to see if she’s happy enough with that for a start, but her hands have found their way around his neck, and their foreheads are touching and he can’t focus on anything but her lips, and the way in which he can’t sink deep enough into them, and when he surfaces from that thought, her hands are on the small of his back inside his shirt, skin on skin holding him pressed tight into her, and his hands tangled in her hair, and one of them’s making small sounds akin to whimpering and he’s not sure which, and time’s stopped.   
There’s a voice from the doorway, and he pulls free, and that can’t be half an hour already. It’s Margaret, with Josh hiding behind her skirt, and she’s looking like the cat that stole the cream.   
“And that’s your time up, and just in time, too, I see,” she says.  
“Margaret,” Bridgid begins.  
“No, that’s your lot. You’ll see him tomorrow, I’m sure, if he can persuade me that Josh needs to see his aunt, or if he can come up with a more honest excuse. Hey, Ben, you could probably beat Charles to the church if you ride for a license this afternoon. You know, if you want longer than half an hour and a chaperone.” Margaret tousles Josh’s hair.   
He can still feel her lips on his, and her hands inside his shirt, and she’s looking at his mouth, and her hair’s all fallen down, tumbling around her shoulders, and he’s trying to be a gentleman and not look at how her chest is heaving, and failing, and he can’t be miserable about that, not really. He clears his throat. “Might go for a ride then.”  
She looks up and he swears there’s a laugh in her eyes, though she’s not smiling. “You do that. I’ve some numbers to look at before my uncle storms over. Hey, Josh, did you find the mulberries, did you? You’re all purple down your front. Your oma’s going to be rare cross with you. Or with me. Come outside and let me wash you up. I’ll see if we can get this clean.”  
“There was a wasp,” Josh remarks, as Margaret shoos him out.   
“Doesn’t surprise me. Nothing worthwhile is easy. But you know that already.” Bridgid replies, as she takes his hand down the front steps and over to the horse trough.   
Margaret holds him by the shoulder on the verandah, as Bridgid strips the little one of his top, and begins the work of washing it. “I mean it. Get yourself married already. It’s too short. All I have left of your brother is that little one over there and it’s not enough. You can do all the talking you two want afterwards. Stop playing around.”  
“Keep your voice down,” he says, in as low a voice he can. He’s cold all over now, as if he’s the one without a shirt, and there were blood being washed out of his shirt, his brother’s blood, all so much of it, and he’d not been able to stop it coming, and there’s the moment again when it bubbles up out of his mouth, and the pressure on his stomach won’t stop it, and he’s gone all over again. Wilhelm’s gone.   
There’s Bridgid now, scrubbing, and he watches her, not the little one who looks too close to his brother, and tries to forget it all. Tries to flick back into the kitchen, and the table, and the moment and it won’t come. For here’s Margaret, and he was there at the moment when the bullet hit and he couldn’t stop it and he should have. He should have.   
“She didn’t say no.” Margaret prompts him, shaking his shoulder, and pushing him back. He swallows. He should have.   
“She didn’t say yes either,” he responds. “That’s what I’m waiting for. So,” and he takes the steps in a bound. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll be over to clear the weeds. Or whatever is on the list first. Yes?”  
“Yes,” Josh responds for Bridgid, now reclad in damp, if less stained, shirt, and with arms folded. “And I will help.”  
Bridgid smooths his shirt. “I would like that,” she says to the small boy. “Tomorrow, then,” she says to the larger one, and he tries not to smile like a loon, as he throws his nephew up in the air, and then helps him up into the buggy. Margaret kisses Bridgid on the cheek, and fixes him with a stern look, before she climbs up too.  
Bridgid’s cheek is soft, and dangerously close to her lips, and when he pulls back, her eyes are closed.   
“Tomorrow,” he says, and she opens her eyes.   
“If I’m still here,” she says.


	50. 15 September 1919, the big house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack points an exit out for Gwen.

He wants to leave. There’s two weeks and change before Gwen marries Charles, and his father’s unbearable, barking orders left and right, and Blinky thinks it’s a laugh. Blue’s bought the train tickets south though, and they’re for the day of, after the do’s over. There isn’t enough dosh to do what he wants to do and buy another ticket for now. So he wants to leave, and he’s stuck. It’s the same feeling as when the Germans were zeroing in, earth shaking behind and in front, and then you see the shell coming and there’s a gun crew missing, and the blokes you’d dossed with the night before aren’t there anymore, and there’s more letters home to write. He’s stuck either way.   
They’re living out the back, the three of them, in the servants’ quarters, down with the grazing boys. It’s easier that way. The house is a shell, with only Charles and the Major in it, but they want it to be as presentable as possible for when Gwen moves in, and so it’s easier to not live there, than to have to follow all the rules. Boots off, inside. Don’t touch the table, the carpet. Don’t swear. There’s sweeping to be done, and all the gardens to be kept neat, but no flower to be picked. Not to eat the grapes.   
Today, Gwen’s here to get her room ready. Organise the bed, the wardrobe, whatever else it is that women do. Inspect the kitchen, perhaps, because here she is, between him and the stores, and he’ll take what he needs later. Her mother must be upstairs, making the bed, preparing the things that’ll take her from a girl into a married woman, and it’s nice that she’ll be happy.  
Looking her over, though, she’s looking about as happy as he is and that’s not normal. She’s a regular dress on, not anything fancy, and she’s been greeted and kissed on both cheeks by Major and Charles, and then left to it. They’ve ridden out for the day, not because there’s any errand that they’re doing, they’re just riding for the fun of it. Currently, she’s standing in the kitchen and she’s looking cowed.   
The place is bigger than Gwen is, and that’s not right. It’s as much his house as Charles’ house, and that’s not right either.  
“You’re thinking it’s big. Big for Queensland, sure, but I bet you worked in bigger in France. I’ve seen bigger cowsheds over there. It’s just a house. You’ve tackled worse problems, I bet.” He sees her flinch, visibly.  
“Jack, good morning. I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Now that she’s looking at him, and not the bank of kitchen stoves, he thinks it’s worse. She’s been crying, and nowhere in his arsenal of things that he’s learnt overseas or at home is how to deal with a crying woman.   
“Just passing through. Don’t worry, I won’t get in your hair. You’ll be fine. Like a holiday after France, I’m sure.” He puts his hat back on, and turns to go. There are fresh sobs, and he can’t in good conscience leave. He pats her awkwardly on the shoulder. “There, there, now. You’ll be married soon enough, and you love Charles, and Charles loves you, and everything will be fine. You won’t have to think about the war anymore.”  
She wipes her face, but the tears keep coming. “I don’t love Charles. No one ever asked me if I did, and I’ve never said I did, and I don’t. I don’t think he really loves me either. And I’m glad of it.”  
“So don’t marry him then. Who said you had to?” He pulls out a kitchen chair, and sits down. She stays standing, and she pulls at her skirts, and extracts an envelope from the pocket.   
“I can’t do anything else. I can’t. My father…” and she stops talking. She looks at the envelope again. It’s been opened, Jack can see, but he’s not the type to pry, and it’s none of his business. He’s not in love with the girl. That being said, she’s still crying, and she fought for him, and that makes her his sister, of a sort.  
“Hang your father. You could come to Victoria with me and the fellas, if you like. My father gave me five hundred pounds to be shot of me, and we’re off. Now, if you want. Nothing holding me to him, that’s for sure. I’ll even marry you myself, if you need a husband.” He can’t help the note of bitterness that steeps his words. His papers are in his breast pocket, just to be sure.   
Three weeks ago, when they’d come back from Dalby, his father had made it clear that there’d be no place for him in the future of the property, and that here was a lump sum and he’d put in a good word, write a letter of reference, if he liked that’d see him right with a position on any station. Like he was a farmhand to be turned out. Blue’d looked at him, waiting for the explosion, and Blinky’d snorted. He’d bitten the inside of his cheek. Taken the money. Given to Blue, and he’d bought the tickets the next day. Taking Gwen with him would serve the old sod right. They can surely sweet talk Susie into changing the date, if they buy one more. She may be married, but she’s a soft touch still, and he’s better at smoothing things over than he had been. They’ll be right.  
She holds her letter in both hands. “I made a mistake. I should never have come home. Now it’s too late. No, I shall marry Charles. But you are very kind to try,” and he can see a tear slide down her cheek, red blotched, and she wipes it away with the back of her hand.   
“Sod that. If I can up and leave, so can you. If Bridgid can stand up to your father, so can you, right? You did it four years ago, what’s stopping you now? Lost your nerve?” He speaks more harshly than he intends. Like he’s stirring up Bluey to move the gun. There’s the same feel of danger, the smell of explosive, as if a shell’s just burst behind, and he’s waiting for the one with her name on it to flatten them, and he can’t tell why.   
She catches her breath suddenly, like she’s seen a ghost. Pauses.   
“I know I’ve had enough of following other people’s orders. Pack it in. Your life now, and I’m not blaming you if you want to marry my fool of a brother. You won’t be wanting for much money can buy you, if I’m not mistaken. But if you don’t, then hang it for a bad bit of business and get shot of it. You had a backbone once, didn’t you?”  
“Yes, I did. You’re a genius, Jack. That’s right, I did.” She carefully kisses the letter, and places it into the unseen pocket. Wipes her cheek with her fingers, carefully composing herself, taking a deep breath, and shaking her hands out. They’re still, when she holds them up to check. “I’m going to go to England. My father can ask the Major to enter into a partnership, if he wants it so badly, but not with me as the dowry.”  
“That’s the spirit. Now you’re talking.” He claps his hat down on the kitchen table. “England for our Gwen. Hang Charles, hang the Major and hang your father too.”  
“I shall take every last thing that I own, and sell what I can, and I should have enough for the steerage, and I shall go home and write now, and arrange for the train to Devon. Thank you, Jack. You are kindness itself.” She kisses him on both cheeks, French fashion, and he blushes, involuntarily, crushing the crown of his hat, as she leaves, calling for her mother.  
Bluey’s said he has a sister or two down in Victoria, and the sisters have friends, if none of the sisters are to his liking, and they’re all country lasses, tough as nails. Probably for the best. He couldn’t stand to be mopping up tears all the time, no matter how sweet the woman. He touches his breast pocket again. He could do with his own place.


	51. 21 September 1919, the West Jones farm, diary of Gwen Jones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack pointed the door out, but Gwen has to walk through it

I have the train ticket bought, but the earliest date I could get for Brisbane was the 4th and the steamer will not leave until the 7th. It feels like an eternity, waiting for the day on which I should be married but shall regain my freedom instead.   
I told my mother directly we left the Smiths that I could not go through with the marriage, and there was an avalanche of reasons that she gave me why I must, all to do with the property, and the settlements, and the wills, and the leases, and none to do with me myself or anything that could not be replaced by any other girl in the world who is not me. I have not been so brave as to tell her quite everything, only that I have a position, and a place, in England, and that position cannot be replaced by any other girl in the world who is not me, for I do not think she would understand. She did not tell my father, as I had asked her to, that I was not to marry Charles, and I did not know of it until this morning, when I asked her to give me my passport again. We had quite the set to. But I thought of my Clementine, and the letter she had written me, which is quite worn now with my reading it over and again, and I held firm. Just as Bridgid did three weeks prior.   
Today, after wearying of the incessant reasoning at me by my mother, and the cold indifference of my father, I took my passport, and my birth certificate, and packed up my clothes, and my bible, and my few precious jewels that I could call my own, and not the ugly sapphire that Charles had handed to me, with warnings to keep it safe and on my person at all times. No, that is in my pocket even now, to be handed to him in person, so that I cannot be accused of theft. And all that I have is with me here at Bridgid’s house. My father has not visited me, nor my mother. He had not visited Bridgid either. It is as if he does not want to acknowledge what has happened. With or without his acknowledgement, I am doing this. I came away too with a box of letters, half from Bridgid’s father, all yellowed and blotched with age and water stains, and a bundle, wrapped about with string, my mother’s kitchen twine, addressed to my cousin in what must be Ben’s hand, for I know not who else would have written so many letters to her from so far away. I certainly received none to be handed to me on arrival, and I cannot understand why my father was resolved that she should not know. I shall give them to her when she is alone. For such a small house, it is surprisingly busy here, with Margaret, and Josh here even when Ben is not, and sometimes even Frau Baumgartner. I do not fear her as much as I did when I was a child.  
Bridgid has the windows open at all times when I am here, and the spring breeze almost reminds me of some of the more pleasant days in France, for the bees are in the flowers in the garden, and she works over her vegetable garden every day, so that the rich earth smell travels. There is a chicken, and she hopes for eggs, although the hen has not yet settled in well enough to lay, and Ben is endeavouring to build a cowstall. He has bought her seed, enough to sow all her fields, when the graziers leave in October, and they have the most ambitious plans, or perhaps they are not ambitious, for I find I have no interest in the discussions, nay, the heated arguments they have about crop yield, and field rotation, but I never did, I recall, when we were taught it at school. At least they are together.   
She is all silence when I ask her about Ben, but when he is here, they are not more than a foot or two apart, and I try to knock or make a loud noise when I enter a room, for I would not want to be disturbed if I were with my Clem, and I have walked in upon them on the sofa in a most compromising position, Bridgid’s bodice heaving, and Ben’s face buried in her shoulder, and neither of them would look me in the eye for an hour afterwards. I had too few nights like that with Clementine to remember and I would not want to begrudge them theirs.   
She has a list, which she leaves on her bedside table and I should not read, but I have, of reasons why she should marry Ben, and she adds to it from time to time. There are some exceedingly practical things written there, that remind me of why I was sleepwalking into Charles, about sharing the burdens, and children, and the shared property and so on. Then there are others, that she would not speak aloud, as to kindness, and compassion for Margaret, the way in which he smiles, all dimples, when she wins an argument with a hapless bystander, and the way he can tease her from a bad mood, or make her soul soar higher than a Brahminy kite. She writes quite sweetly when she has a mind to it, and it is the sort of thing that she would write, rather than ever tell him, I feel.   
Margaret has confided to me that Ben has a marriage license obtained for Saturday 4th October, when I was to be wed, and the minister has agreed to a small service in the afternoon, should Bridgid agree to be wed, so as not to interfere with the planned Smith Jones wedding in the morning that I am certain shall not happen, so one way or another, with luck one of the Jones girls will be wed next month, and it shall not be me. If she does not agree, I shall produce her list to Ben, and call her coward.   
I do not care, I find, that Clem has forgotten the now of why she loves me or I her, for I shall give her reason enough to do so in the future, and she certainly remembers our past. I cannot wait to kiss her dear mouth again, and hold her to me so tight that she will have no reason to fear that I will leave her ever. Her mother wrote to me separately again and urged me to return, in the most ardent terms. She cries at night, her mother says. I cannot bear that. I shall be everything I can to her to make up for what she has lost, and moreover for my absence. I feel as if I have woken from a nightmare, with the unshakeable conviction that I must return to her and rescue my love again.   
I owe the awakening to Jack. We did not speak for long, but I found it long enough to remember all the reasons not to settle into complacent slumber here. I cannot imagine how he must feel. I would be outraged if my father offered me money to leave, and in effect, that is what he was endeavouring to do, buy and sell his future with me as the stake. My father is no better than his. I think of the two, his is worse. Jack has fought and bled for this country, and for the Smith name, and the Major should do well by him, better than a few paltry pounds and an invitation to leave, setting aside how his mother was treated, which is abominable, and the way in which Jack patiently bore his childhood as the unfavoured child.   
Of the two, I think Jack the better man by far than his brother. Charles has not spoken above twenty words to me in the last month, seemingly content to have his father speak for him in all arrangements, and speaking to me only when he needs to. Jack, who has no reason to care beyond natural human empathy, has taken pains to ask for my wellbeing, and prompted me into ensuring it myself. Charles does not even know that I served my country, for my father would still have me conceal it from him, one of the things about myself of which I am most proud, and would shun me for it. Jack respects me for it. If I could find it in myself to love a man, I would love Jack for it.   
I visited the manse yesterday, with Bridgid standing at the door, to advise the minister that there would not be a Smith Jones wedding. At least he did not ask any prying questions of me, although he was keen to know from Bridgid whether there would be a Baumgartner Jones wedding in the afternoon. His wife gave me a cup of tea, sensible china and sturdy, and she was careful to tell me of other weddings that had not happened, although without names, and without telling me whether the instances were in this parish or the next. The minister will place a notice in this week’s order of service, advising that the wedding service is cancelled. With luck, I shall be gone and away from the gossip before it properly starts.   
I cannot tell Charles just yet, for he and his father have gone with the graziers to ride the stock to the next station. If I loved him even the tiniest of amounts I would be most annoyed that he’d chosen the stock over me, but the immense sense of relief I have in his absence tells the tale only too well. They are to return the day before the wedding, and I shall ask Ben to take me up in the buggy that night, to break with them. Clem’s letter shall give me the strength I need. I recall her standing up to the matrons often enough, for the care of the patients, and her courage shall give me mine in the face of the Major.


	52. 3 October 1919, the big house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwen's not marrying Charles. Someone else has a marriage licence, but he doesn't know if he's going to get to use it

He’s nervous for her. It’s like the moments waiting for the call from the outpost, for the Major to nod, and the sergeants to stir the troops and the horses to move. Gwen seems perfectly poised, straight backed, and face neutral, even a slight smile about her lips, although none to her eyes. She’s wearing the plainest of skirts, and a blouse that must have been worn thoroughly over a long period, and her hair is severe, pulled into a bun, with no softness about it. Bridgid’s holding her hand, as the horse pulls the buggy into the drive, and he brings them to a halt.   
The house has been freshly painted, all in brightest of white, and the flowerbeds are edged in light green with the new growth, and blue with the little spring flowers. The front door is tightly shut. Gwen leaps down anyway. She’s a letter prepared against their absence, and she’s taken care not to crush it in the drive up, holding it as carefully as a baby. He sees her put it through the mailslot, although surely it’s the first time anyone’s ever used it. Before the war, there were servants, a cook, a maid, a horseboy, a gardener, that the Major retained, and let go when he went away to war, and no care for their future. Ben’s not sure where those folk are, to tell the truth.   
Gwen pulls herself up with Bridgid’s hand, and resumes her seat, folding her skirt neatly about her. “That’s it. One more night, and then that’s it. Let’s go.”  
He clicks at the horse, but of course it doesn’t move, because he’s driving the buggy, not riding. It takes two shakes of the reins before the horse deigns to move. He’s some work to do, clearly. The wheels scrunch on the gravel of the drive, and when he finishes the turn to take the straight and back to the road, and onto the smooth surface, he can hear that one of them’s crying, and the other’s comforting. Best not to disturb.  
Besides, there’s a gaggle of horses up ahead, and as he pulls onto the main road, he sees more clearly: it’s the graziers, with the Major and Charles, no stock. Charles is sitting in that overly relaxed fashion that he recognises as the one that Charles assumes when he’s a drink too many taken, and the Major is sitting in the rigid one that he assumes when he’s exasperated beyond reason. He calculates quickly the distance left to the turn to the Jones, and the speed at which he can stir the mare up to, and the distance left until the grazier party arrives and the speed at which they’re travelling, and it’s not a good result.   
“Bridge. She’d best be ready, because we’re out of time. Can she manage?”   
When he turns to see, it’s Bridgid wiping her eyes with her skirt, and that’s a question for later, and Gwen sitting with complete poise yet again.   
“Yes, of course I can. It’s better this way, surely. Letters are for cowards.” Gwen says, and her hands are folded once again.   
Then they’re truly out of time, as the horses surround them.  
“Ah, my blushing bride. Couldn’t wait one more day to see me, eh?” booms Charles, in the expansive manner that means that in half an hour, he’ll be morose and ill tempered. “Thought it was bad luck, eh? I don’t care if you don’t. Come here and give me a kiss, then.”  
Gwen stays put. “I need to talk to you. In private, please.”  
“Go on, boys, up to the house. Secret wedding business.” The Major gestures and the graziers and their horses amble on, and she waits until the sound of their hooves have died down, before she turns and climbs down.  
It takes Charles more than a few seconds to realise that she’s standing beneath him, and he slides down to join her. There’s an arm slung around her waist, and Gwen tipped backwards for a kiss, which Ben can hear from the buggy, wet and slapping, and Gwen wipes her mouth afterwards, and steps back, back up against the buggy wheel.  
“Charles, I can’t go through with it. I’ve told the minister. You’re a perfectly fine fellow, and I’m greatly appreciative of the honour of the offer of your hand, but I can’t be married to you. I won’t be.” It comes out in a rush, like blood. Ben can hear the relief in her voice.   
Charles steps in to her, as close as needed for close combat, or dancing, and the Major straightens further on his horse.   
“Oh, it’s just nerves. You girls are so silly sometimes. You’ll be perfectly fine once we’re married, you’ll see. I’ll be careful. I’ve been told I’m pretty good, you know.”  
“Charles,” Ben says, “that’s not the sort of thing you should be saying in mixed company. Listen to Gwen, please do. Pretend it’s a briefing.” He can feel his shoulders tense, all the way down to where he holds the reins. He’s had to pull Charles out of enough scrapes caused by his lack of situational awareness and his propensity to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. This time, he’s concerned. Gwen should never have left the buggy, he thinks. She’s vulnerable down there on the ground. He wonders, suddenly, where Charles stows his knife while he’s riding now.   
“A briefing. Right, Major, listen to the sergeant. He wants me to take orders from my wife. Potty.”  
“She’s not your wife, Charles,” hisses Bridgid from behind him, in the buggy, and he wants her to stop talking. Wants Gwen to climb back in, now.  
“Charles,” says Gwen, as calmly as if she’s asking whether he’d like one lump or two in his tea. Asking how his day was. “I cannot marry you. I have no doubt that you’ll find someone else suitable very shortly, but it will not be me. Major, all our legal arrangements were contingent on us being married, correct?”  
The Major nods, and Ben can see the set jaw.   
“So there is nothing yet to undo, for nothing has been done.” She pauses, taking breath. Fumbles in her pocket, and withdraws a little thing, the ring. Presses it into Charles’ hand, and he fastens his hand about it automatically. “I shall be returning to England shortly, and I do not expect to return, so this may be the last time I see you both. Thank you both for all your kindness, and I wish you well. Ben?” She turns and holds up a hand for him to take, to hand her up.   
It’s too late, for Charles has his arm about her waist again. He’s holding her against him, trapped between his body, and the buggy wheel, and she can’t move. “You’ll damn well marry me, I tell you. You better. I can arrange things so you’ve got no choice if you don’t choose me. Hear me?” He pulls her flush against him, and Ben can see her face turn white.  
“Charles,” says his father sternly. “No act of a gentleman. This is a time for talking, not action. Let her go.”  
Charles pulls her tighter, one arm locked about her waist, and now the other about her shoulders, lower than propriety permits, and hands where no gentleman should put them on a lady in public, and Ben’s moving now, because he knows how quick Charles can change, and it’s coming, and even if he doesn’t know where Charles’ knife is, he knows his is on his belt, and it’s sharp.  
“No. I earned this. I went off and fought for my country, and now I’m going to marry the girl who waited for me. That’s how it’s meant to be. Don’t you try it, Ben.”   
Ben holds his hands up, at the edge of the buggy.  
“Listen to me,” Gwen says, breathing shallowly, “I was in France. I saved lives and I worked damn hard for my country too. And I didn’t wait for you and I’m pretty certain you didn’t wait for me. I have absolutely no desire to marry you. I want you to let me go. Let me go, Charles.”  
Ben can see it coming, but he’s still in the buggy, and there’s no way he can catch her. Charles shoves her violently against the buggy wheel, so violently that her head slams against the hub with force, and there’s a sickening thud.   
“You lie. You never left the country. The closest you’ve been to France is my bastard brother Jack. Is that it? Is that it, Gwen? You’ve betrayed me with Jack? I saw you talking to him at the cricket match, I should have known it, you witch. I’m going to kill him. And when I’ve dealt with him, I’ll deal with you.” Charles regains his saddle, and hauls his horse’s head about and kicks it into a gallop almost immediately, wheeling up the drive.   
The Major looks down at Gwen, unmoving. “I don’t know what you think you’re playing at. I’m going to go and deal with Charles, and I expect to see you at the church tomorrow. This has all been planned, and agreed, by people your elders and betters. You’ll be married to my son, and you’ll be happy. Baumgartner.” The Major follows his son, at a more sedate pace.   
Gwen still hasn’t moved. Bridgid pushes Ben aside, and clambers out of the buggy, gently pushing her cousin over. There’s a huge lump on Gwen’s head, there’s blood and her eyes are shut. “She’s out. Help me get her into the buggy?” Bridgid asks.  
Gwen’s heavier than he expects, and Bridgid’s stronger than he expects too. The bench isn’t quite long enough, and they arrange her on the floor. Bridgid’s still crying, he notes, as she arranges her cousin’s limbs so that they fit, and gently wipes the blood from her head. He passes her his jacket, and Bridgid tucks it under Gwen’s head, as carefully as she can.   
“She’ll be fine, probably. Just, as smoothly as you can?” He nods, and she joins him on the front seat, and nudges the horse into action.  
She slips her hand onto his, as the horse moves along, and the buggy away from the big house. It’s light, and steady, and he remembers that she’s seen worse than this often enough, although never with her cousin involved. Not with anyone she cares about.   
“Where’s Jack?” she asks, and he flicks the reins, and the buggy moves faster.   
“Jack can take care of himself, I’m pretty certain. And if he can’t, Blinky and Blue’ll do it for him. It’s tonight I’m worried about, when the fool sobers up and decides to come and take what he thinks is his.” Ben watches the road, intently. He has vivid memories of Charles, entering towns, and settlements, and the way in which he’d wielded the bayonet, and the sabre, and the blood. There was laughing, he recalls. There’d been bodies he didn’t want to look at. He hadn’t thought, back at home, Charles would be the same. He should have thought. Shouldn’t have stayed silent when the engagement was announced. Shouldn’t have been distracted with the hand on his arm.   
“And what are we going to do about that? If only, oh, if only there was a man who’d be prepared to stay with us and fight for Gwen.” Bridgid’s stopped crying, he notes, if only for the purpose of teasing him.  
“Ha. You know I’m staying. Mutti’ll understand. In fact, I think I’d be in more trouble if I didn’t, than if I did. Besides, Gwen’s an adequate chaperone, so by protecting her, I’m also protecting myself. Pure self interest.” He chances a look at her, and she’s definitely not crying anymore. In fact, he’d go so far as to say he’s not seen this expression before. It’s a good one.  
“Of all the men that I’ve ever met, in all the world, I think you’re my favourite. Did you know that?” It’s not really a question, more of a statement, and she’s not not smiling.   
He pauses, and the horse continues, and the buggy rolls on and the world hasn’t ended. Gwen’s still lying unconscious in the well of the buggy. There’s night falling about the road, and the purple is rising up around the horizon, and the swallows are swooping about the fields.  
“Just to clarify. In case of any confusion. I’d do anything for you. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there isn’t much I haven’t done for you. You know that.” It’s not a question at all.  
He holds the reins in one hand, and holds the other one out for her, and she takes it.   
“Just as long as we’re clear on that,” he says. Her hand in his squeezes, and releases.   
The marriage license is burning a hole in his inside pocket. If he’d known five years ago, just how hard it would be to wait, perhaps he would not have allowed himself to start. As if he’d had a choice. All he has to do now is wait.

Frau Baumgartner has sent dinner, sausages, and spinach greens, and wholewheat bread, food that warms but doesn’t satiate to the point of slumber. Jack’s grateful, and not just for the food, but for the care, for the food they’ve scraped together for the last two months doesn’t compare. Blue’s mother apparently is the best chef this side of that little town in France with the potatoes and onions cooked in cream, but Frau Baumgartner’d be a close second, Blue says. Gwen’s bandaged his arm up, and he hasn’t the heart to tell her that in the field, he’d likely just put a sock on it to keep the dirt out, but she’s being as careful as any nurse he’s ever met, and he’s grateful for that too. He’s not looking too closely at the circumstances in which he received it. Charles had come at him with a knife, that’s certain, and he was shouting fit to burst eardrums, that’s clear also, but he was shouting about Gwen and France, and unfaithfulness and women, and that’d thrown Jack a bit, and the knife had nicked his arm but good on the way pat, as he’d turned and encouraged Charles’ face to find the floor with a certain degree of force, and Blinky’d sat on his back until the Major arrived, and then it was all action stations, and never darken my door again, you dog. He doesn’t want to think about his father’s face. Surely he must know that Charles moved first, and for reasons that were clearly inspired by the drink he’d taken?   
He’s taken nothing that doesn’t belong to him, and made sure the others have done likewise. He’ll leave in the morning, and he’s grateful that he’s the Baumgartner, and the young Jones lass in his company, for where else would have taken his friends to sleep the night? Frau Baumgartner had been the first he’d called on, expecting Ben to be at home, and she’d been very kind, given the circumstances. Young Josh had been very big eyed, as you would be to have three large soldiers appear after dark, and Margaret defensive, but Frau Baumgartner had given them a cup of tea, and suggested that they make their way to Bridgid Jones’ where she’d be glad of the extra company, given the circumstances, which Ben would explain on his arrival. Packaged up the sausages and greens and bread for them and all. So here he is, on the floor of Bridgid’s living room, with Blinky’s snoring on the floor next to him, and Blue out like a light with his arms about Blinky as usual, and he, Jack Smith, can’t sleep.  
When he arrived at the little Jones’ house, Bridgid had hugged him, something she doesn’t do often, from his observation. She’s softer than she appears, softer almost than Gwen. She’s out on the verandah, sitting with Ben, under the quarter moon, in the soft moonlight, and one blanket, and holding hands, and that’s a whole story and a half, with neither of them sniping at the other, and to be wed in the morning, if Ben has his way, and he can’t laugh at that exactly, but it tickles, friction against the happiness. Ben’s going to get what he wants, and Jack doesn’t even know what’s at the end of the road. It’s great that he has friends, but he doesn’t have a family, and he doesn’t have his past, and a hug from a happy woman won’t make up for that.  
Gwen’s forehead is bruised, and there’s a goose egg on it. She won’t speak as to the circumstances, but after Bridgid’s stood over her and made her eat, and then off to bed with you, young lady’d her, in her best VAR voice, Ben explains the circumstances, and Jack’s sorry that he hadn’t known aforehand. He’s sorry he hadn’t given Charles more of a hiding, but he’s in no position to do it, not with his father likely to send the constable over for a friendly chat, and round him up to work as unpaid labour again, at his father’s beck and call. His papers are tucked into his breast pocket, and his money’s safe in his bank account, and he can’t wait for the train tomorrow and a fresh start, a clean break. Gwen deserves one too. They’ll make a defensive triangle about her, and keep her safe until Brisbane, and Brisbane’s far enough away that she’ll be safe to get on the boat, and he’s strangely proud that she’s taken his advice. She’s a good sort, is Gwen. She’s given him a piece of paper, with instructions to put it into Ben’s jacket pocket, which he’s done, in one of the many moments when Ben’s fetching and carrying bedding to make up the living room for sleep, him and Blinky, and Blue, because Jack’s not allowed to disturb his arm. Hasn’t the heart to tell Gwen that he had worse and lived, and it’s nice to have the care taken.   
There’s writing on the paper, he noted, and he expects it’s a farewell of some sort, a thank you for the help, because Gwen’s the sort of girl who’d remember her manners, even in the thick of a mess. She’s probably half a dozen soldiers she writes to, back in England, and like enough she’s going back to one of them. It’s none of his business, as long as she’s safe. Tonight, by damn, she will be. It’s a full house, tonight, but it feels bigger than the big house ever did, like it’ll expand until it cracks, if it needs to, to fit everyone in, but by damn it’ll do it. His life on it.  
It’s two in the morning when he wakes, and it’s Ben’s hand on his shoulder. He’s instantly awake, and with a kick to Blinky’s leg, the three of them are up. They stay under the window line, out of sight. Bridgid’s nowhere to be seen, and the bedroom doors are shut tight.   
There’s a light, Ben’s pointing out, unsteady and moving out in the field. In France, that’d be enough, they’d mount the gun and take a sighting, and they’d let fire. That’d be it, there’d be no more little light. They’re without their gun here. They have their rifles, of course. Ben has the sister of the knife that cut his arm, but that’ll only be good if the danger’s as close as Charles had been. Assuming, of course, that it’s Charles. Which it must be.  
There’s now more than one light. There’s several, in a line facing the house, as if an advancing army.  
He nods. Bluey heads to the back of the house, and out the rear door, into the orchard. Blinky claps him on the shoulder, and heads to the window, with the gun.   
The night’s still, too late for cicadas, and not the right time of year for night birds, only the rustle of the someone, or someones, advancing on the house. Gravel, now, under foot, and whoever it is, is too close.   
“Aaaaay. Wake up, Gwen. I’ve come for you, little bridey.” The voice is cocky and overconfident, and too familiar, even drunk. “C’mon. C’mon out. I need you, bridey.” The voice is louder now, and there’s no way Gwen’s sleeping through this.  
He can hear Ben, opening the front door. “Charles, fella. Go on home. This isn’t the way to do things. Go on now.”  
“Fuck you, Ben. Always telling me what to do. Don’t tell me what to do. She’s going to be mine. Or she’s going to be dead. You fetch her out here to me and I’ll make certain she marries me tomorrow.”   
There’s a bullethole in the wood by the window now, he notes. Bridgid won’t like that. Ben shuts the door, and fades back into the dark.   
He opens the window, carefully, and Blinky and he both take a sighting. Ben’s down the hall now, at the window near the kitchen, and he sees one of the lights go out, and Ben reload, and then another.   
Ben hisses, urgently, “Lanterns, not people. We did it in the desert. Only the one that’s movin’s Charles. Just don’t shoot him. Last thing we need.”   
He’s quicker than they are, but Blinky takes out another, and on his second attempt, he takes the last. There’s enough light for him to see Charles’ outline, but not his face. He takes careful aim, and the shot stings the ground between Charles’ feet, and he’s gratified to see his half brother halt.   
“That’s not bloody nice, Ben. Not bloody nice at all.” The figure raises his arm, and there’s another hole, this time through the glass, and there’s shards about his hair. “Now you bring out my girl to me, and I’ll let you get back to yours. Fair’s fair.”  
He hears a bedroom door creak open, and then another. There’s the outline of a woman in the corridor and he can’t tell which. “Down, it’s damn Charles, and he’s a gun. Get down, damn it.”   
It’s Bridgid, he sees when she’s close enough to focus in the dark, closely followed by Gwen, both flanking the wall closely, and Bridgid’s face is angry, and Gwen’s is enraged.   
“Give me a damn gun then. No one shoots at my house.”   
“And no one shoots at me. The hide of it! How dare he! I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.” She’s standing, and she’s silhouetted, and the next minute she drops to the ground, clutching at her right upper arm, and there’s blood, and Bridgid scrambles up and presses on it, hard, and yanking at her nightshirt, ripping it, hard, and bandaging it about.   
“I don’t think he’s worth the effort, to be honest.” Bridgid hisses.   
Blinky chuckles, without taking his eye from the window. “Probably thinks he’s killed her, the sod. May’ve been a crack shot in the desert, but he’s rubbish here.”  
“Yes,” says Bridgid, “that’s the ticket.” She pitches her voice high, and loud. “You’ve shot her you swine. Charles, you fool, you’ve shot her.” Violent, loud sobs, and Gwen’s looking confused. Blinky’s not.   
“That’ll do the job, I wager. Wait a little minute and see what he does. Cry a bit more. You too, Jack.”   
“Charles, she’s bleeding. God, so much blood. Gwen. Father won’t be able to get you out of this one. Her blood is on your hands, she’s like to die.” Jack lets his inner actor take centre stage. “If you truly loved her, you’d never have shot. You had better think on what you’ve done and call it a night.”  
There’s a choked sob from outside. “Oh, god. I’ve killed her.”  
Gwen looks up. Jack nods at her. “As innocent a girl I’ve ever known. I’d swear she’s never known a man. Certainly not me.” He mouths an apology to Gwen. She shrugs.  
“Oh Bridgid, I’m so sorry. I loved her so much. I’ll never love again.”  
“Good,” mutters Gwen, holding her arm.   
Blinky stifles a chuckle. It’s two am and he’s a little punch drunk. Then falls silent. Gwen’s bleeding, after all, if not quite as much as they’ve led Charles to believe. There’s the sound of feet on gravel, and they wait, a tumble of legs and bandages, and bedding materials. There’s the creak, and the back door clicks open. Bluey appears, haloed with moonlight.   
“I reckon that’ll see him off. I’ll watch him down the road a spell, just to be sure.” Blinky nods, and Bluey drifts back into the night.  
Bridgid repeats her cousin’s performance, with vinegar, and fresh bandages, and now he and Gwen are twins in misery. Gwen’s more stoic than he was, and watches Bridgid’s work with more interest than he did. Bridgid’s just as methodical, and painstaking, and Gwen nods, at the end, she’s satisfied.   
Gwen’s left hand twitches. “What a fool to stand up like that. I used to know better.” She laughs, and her hand balls into a fist. “I should never have come back to Australia, Jack. God, I almost married him. He shot me.” She laughs again, a little hysterically, and Bridgid tries to unball the fist. She settles for putting her hand on Gwen’s, and Gwen shakes it off. Abruptly falls silent.   
“I can’t be here anymore. I just can’t. Bridge?”   
Bridgid stands, and gingerly pulls Gwen to her feet.   
“Tomorrow, we’ll put you on the train. You’ll never have to see him again. It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Come along to bed again, do.”   
Gwen’s a little unsteady on her feet, and Bridgid and she collide with the wall more than once. The bedroom door’s closed behind the two of them, and Jack can hear a discussion, but not what it concerns, and it doesn’t concern him anyway. They have the living room set back to rights, or at least into enough of a rough bed again as will do, by the time Bridgid emerges, alone.   
“Right,’ says Bridgid. “Show me the damage.” No nonsense nurse voice, and she’s clearly not explaining anything about Gwen, or willing to discuss Charles, or weddings, or trips overseas. So they don’t ask.   
It’s too dark to find most of it, but there’s bullet holes about the door, and Bridgid inserts a finger in one, probing. Splinters around the edges. Blinky finds a hole in the kitchen door, at the rear of the living room, that must have passed between the lot of them.   
Ben whistles. “He’s used a whole clip. Look here, there’s holes on the stairs. I bet there’s a mess of them down on the drive. Never was a good shot.”  
Jack shakes his head. “Blow this for a joke. You think on it, because you’ll be stuck with him, and the Major. You could come on down to Victoria, take up the government offer, and make a fresh start. Follow in my lead, or at least come and visit. Yes?”   
Bridgid looks at the door. Folds her arms.   
“Fine. Well, you know where to come if it turns sour. You’ll always have a place with me.”  
The back door creaks open again, and Blue puts his rifle on the kitchen table, next to the bowl of grapes. “He’s taken himself off, tail between his legs. Rode fast too, good horse. Makes sense, I guess. Rich kid, and all, but he’s sitting a might odd. You might have hit him, I reckon, one of you fellows. That or he’s too drunk to sit a horse.”  
Bridgid holds her hands up. “I don’t care. As long as he’s gone. Bed for me. Bed for us all, I think.”  
Blinky and Blue echo a good night, as does Jack, and there’s shoes off, and rifles stowed, and bedrolls tumbled into, and Ben turns to find his place on the verandah again.   
“Oh, come on. For heaven’s sake, come to bed. You can’t sleep on the verandah,” Bridgid hisses at Ben. He stands with his back to her, hand on the door. Blinky nudges Blue from the bedroll.   
“After the war, I can sleep anywhere. Besides, your bed, I’m pretty certain that’s not happening,” says Ben, and Jack sees half a smile appear, and vanish, on his face. “These chaps here’ll have something to say to me if I do. Right chaps?”   
“Oh, Ben,” says Jack. “You’re to be wed in the morning. I’m sure we can turn a blind eye if the lady wants us to. Be a gentleman and go to bed.” Blue nudges Blinky.  
“I meant to sleep, you twit. Come on.” Bridgid’s hands are on her hips, and she’s clearly run out of any patience. It’s two am, and it’s too late for that.   
“I’m going to be a damn gentleman and not. It’s not that cold a night. But I’ll walk the lady to her door, and the rest of you can turn your damn backs.” Ben lets the door go, and pats the frame, right on the bullethole, and turns, shooing them down, down into their bed rolls, and there’s further chuckling by Blinky, and Blue pulls the cover over his head, and Jack lies on his back, with the cover about his chin.   
“Night then, Bridgid. Ben.” Jack cranes his head backwards, and sees them walk to the bedroom door, and Bridgid pull Ben’s face down to hers, and then he tips his head back, turning the blind eye that he’d promised.  
“You’re as stubborn as a mule, Baumgartner,” he hears Bridgid whisper, and there’s a pause in conversation, and a sigh from Ben. He’s trying not to listen, but it’s a still night, and Blinky’s not snoring, yet. “After today, after all of that, would you just, not be so ridiculous? I dare you.”  
“I’m delightfully old fashioned, is what I am, and you’re not daring me into this. You want me, you marry me. I’m no Charles. 9am, church, tomorrow. Besides, think a minute. What if I let you pull me in there and have your way with me and you discover I’m a dud? What are my chances then? No, surely it’s better for me all around to resist. I’m going to kiss you, and then I’m going to go and sleep on the front verandah and think about all the things I could be doing instead. All of them.”  
There’s a shuddering sigh from Bridgid in response. “That’s not fair at all. I’m not going to sleep if I know you’re doing that.”  
“I’ve been doing that for years now, and you’ve been sleeping perfectly well. Just pretend you don’t know for one more night. Pretend you hate me still.” There’s another pause, and he really doesn’t want to know any more. “Besides, the house is full of ears. You’d have to put a hand over my mouth the whole time, and I over yours, and I’ve better uses for hands than that.” Ben must be kissing her neck, because there’s an unmistakable female noise, and that’s about his limit. Jack clears his throat, loudly. “Either tumble or don’t, but please for the love of god, stop talking about it.”   
The talking stops. A bedroom door opens and shuts, and Ben shortly thereafter walks past the bedrolls, accidentally on purpose nudging Jack with his foot. “Night, Jack.”  
“Sleep tight, you stupid mule.”


	53. 4 October 1919, Jones’ farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything comes to a head

The light hits her eyes and she’s suddenly awake. The white cotton curtains glow painfully on her eyeballs. It’s five thirty, she reckons, time to be up and out in the fields. The plans they have don’t include planting out wheat just yet, it’s too late for that. It’s sorghum, and cattle fodder, and there’s a market for that, she reckons. Her uncle’s planted that out in the past, with results, though she hasn’t asked, and won’t ask, for his advice, unless she has to. The sheep have grazed the paddocks, sure, but they need to refence, and tighten the wiring where it’s still up, and then prepare the fields, and that’s what they should be doing today, hats against the sun, and sweat soaking through their shirts, she and whoever she can round up to work with her.   
Ben is who she means, she admits to herself, stretching out in the bed against the press of the sheets. She wants Ben alongside her in the fields, so that she can look over and watch him when he’s not looking, the pull of his shirt against his shoulders, and steal a kiss from when she’s finished with the fencing wire. Since she’s alone in the bed, she can admit to herself without Blinky’s laugh, or Jack’s overattentive ears, she wants Ben alongside her here too. His hips pinning hers down and his mouth on her neck, and his muscles under her hands, and that noise that he makes when she stirs against him. The laugh when she teases him, and the spreadsheet he’d done up for her on not enough sleep that proved she could run the farm herself. That she can be free.  
She’s going to marry him.   
She throws the sheets off, and her clothes on. The white passageway, however, proves challenging, as Blinky at some point during the night extended his legs down it, and it’s blocked. Back in her room, she shimmys the window open, and clambers out, and her skirt only sticks twice, and she doesn’t rip it, so she’s counting that as success.  
The drop’s not too far. The grass is still wet with dew, and she disturbs some wood doves, and there’s the shushing of their wings, but that won’t wake anyone, with luck. There’s the beginnings of a spectacular sunrise, the clouds beginning to redden, streaks of gold flecking back over the domed sky, and only little sheep clouds, no rain, and she’s going to marry him, but first she has to wake him up. She’s going to kiss him. No, she’s going to lie down next to him, so that when he wakes up, he’ll see her, and he’ll know that she loves him.  
The verandah’s empty, except for a neatly folded blanket, and her stomach sinks. She pushes open her front door, and finds the gaggle of army boys still sacked out in their bed roll. Blinky’s arms are about Blue, and Jack is starfished with his arms above his head. She closes the door as silently as she can, but it’s not silently enough, and all three eyes blink open at the sound.   
“Everything okay? Did he come back?” Jack says, and she hears Gwen’s bedroom door open in response.   
“No, long gone. Sorry to wake you. Breakfast?,” she offers.  
No one asks her what she was doing out the front, or where Ben’s gone. Eggs are eaten, and porridge devoured, and in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, bedrolls are packed, and Gwen’s bag is out the front, and they’re all neatly dressed in their best travelling gear, and Bridgid in her blue. It helps that they’ve all had to muster out on short notice previously.   
In the kitchen, Gwen rebandages Jack’s arm, and Bridgid does Gwen’s. On neither arm is there troubling red streaks, or anything that looks unduly swollen, more than one would expect, and each is pronounced fit for travel. Gwen shoos the boys out to the water pump, and directs them to wash down, and she won’t be travelling with anyone that doesn’t, and once the door shuts behind them, she takes Bridgid’s hand.  
“We’re walking with you to the train or the church? You’ll need to make up your mind before the turning.”  
Bridgid stops at the sink and looks out to the kitchen garden. There’s butterflies spiralling about the grape vine, all the little green flowers rustling, and some falling down, like green rain.   
“I need to tell you something, before we leave. I’m envious of you. You and Ben. Even if you don’t marry today, I saw you, that day when he came home, and you were spitting chips at him, and even then, he was the only one you were looking at, don’t deny it. Four years apart, and I bet he still remembers every argument you’ve ever had. But she doesn’t remember, you see, my darling doesn’t. She doesn’t know why she loves me, or why I love her and every day, I’m going to have to court Clementine again, every day until we’re old and grey, to make up for the years she’s forgotten and it will be lovely, oh it will, but it won’t be the same as this.”   
Bridgid grasps Gwen’s hand, wet with the bubbles from the dishes. “You said there was nothing to tell, and you give me this crumb. That’s a girl’s name, I’m not stupid. All this time you would have married Charles, that giant buffoon of a man, and you’re in love with a woman. England. Love. Why would you not have told me?”   
“Never mind that now. Have you read his letters?” Gwen presses her hand urgently.  
Bridgid pauses. The box.   
“I thought they were my father’s letters. I meant to read them.” She withdraws her hand. “Do I have time?”  
Gwen laughs. “One, probably, if you’re quick. I’d read the last first, and save the rest for later. See what he says.”  
She leaves Gwen, chuckling in the kitchen, and there’s no time, not really, not if they’re to make the walk into town, for either the interrogation of her cousin or the investigation of the letters, but she’s chosen, and there’s less than no time for second guessing. The box is on the top of her wardrobe, and there’s dust, and spiderwebs, and her hands are uncertain, shaky. She wills them steady.   
In the box, there are two bundles, one marked “David Jones, found in possessions” and there’s her father’s past, and it’s precious, but it’s not what she’s looking for. The other is a bundle of white, with stamps showing the Pyramids, and clearly addressed to Miss Bridgid Jones, in handwriting she knows too well as belonging to the chap who’ll be down the front of the church and anxious in less than an hour. They’re tied about with string, neatly knotted by her aunt, she’d wager. The knot won’t untie, and she cuts it with her penknife, and curses the time she’s taking. It’s quite a little parcel, but the dates show he’s been a faithful correspondent, all the way up until March 1917, when he must have lost his pen, or his will to write.   
She selects that one, and opens it.   
She reads it over, once, then twice, and Gwen clears her throat at the door.  
She’s flushed from head to toe, or so she feels. She places the letter carefully back in the envelope, and the envelope on top of the others in the box.   
“Come on, Gwen, I have somewhere to be. And you’re telling me all the things you’ve kept hidden, quickly now, on our walk there. Quick as you can, then.”  
With Gwen huffing about people who take all the time and complain about others, she locks the house, and they make their way down the lane, and the road, and there’s swallows swooping over the fields, and finches balancing on the stray hay stems. They allow the fellows to walk ahead, and by the end of the journey, Bridgid knows her cousin a good deal better than she ever has before, and pronounces her a hopeless romantic, at which Gwen kisses her on the cheek, and then carefully wipes it off. Bridgid holds her close when they arrive at the church, at five after nine, which Jack says is perfectly respectable, and enough time to make a groom fret over a bride, and it takes Bridgid a couple of seconds to realise he’s takin about her. To pull herself out of the love story with bed pans as incidentals, and remember where she is, and that the people in the church aren’t waiting for Gwen. Not that there’s likely to be that many, in any case. The Baumgartners, at least, and perhaps her aunt and uncle. Although there’s a larger number of horses out the back, she observes, than match that number.  
She straightens her hair, and her skirt, and wishes she’d a nicer dress. Wishes she’d flowers, and time to plan all the things that go along with a wedding, and that she’d come to her morning realisation a month before. Opened the box sooner.   
Jack opens the door, and she can’t see into the dark, but he, and Blinky and Blue march in confidently, and disappear into a pew. Gwen takes her arm, and as they move forward, and her eyes adjust, more than they’d done with the quarter moon the night before, she takes in that the little church is not empty, but half full. There’s the Baumgartners down the front, and she’s not looking up the front just yet, and the McGregors taking up a good two pews, and opposite them a whole row of Stuart. The graziers are down the back, and she nods at them. Down the front she sees her aunt and uncle, and feels Gwen halt, momentarily. Her aunt smiles, and Bridgid smiles back, and Gwen keeps moving. It’s not a very big church, so it’s no time at all until she’s there, and Ben’s smile, no one has the right to look that happy. It’s ridiculous, and dangerously, optimistically, stupid.  
He holds out his hand. Gwen releases her arm, and she takes his. His pulse is racing, she notes, she can feel it in every finger enfolding her hand.  
“I didn’t know if you would come,” he whispers, as the minister invites the congregation to stand, and sing the opening hymn.   
“I need someone to help me run the farm, remember?” She whispers back, half smile, waiting for him to tease her back, and she can feel the moment spin and whir like a gear that’s lost its traction. He drops his hand from hers.  
“Really. Well, then. I’m only here because I’m taking pity on you. Is that it?” She can feel the eyes of the congregation as she puts her hands on her hips. It’s not a very bridal pose.  
Gwen hisses at her. “I have a train. Ben, jacket pocket. Look at it.”  
Ben pats down his pockets until he hears a crinkle, and fishes the paper out. She can see writing, her handwriting, through the back, two columns, but she can’t make it out. There’s been too many plans, too many budgets drawn up, to be able to guess which one this might be.   
Then she sees the smirk. The I know something that you don’t smirk, all teasing pursed lips, and dancing eyes. “Higher than a brahminy kite, is it. You love me. Don’t tell me you’re marrying me for the farm. Or even for what you wanted last night. You love me.” He’s not taunting, he’s triumphant.   
He holds his hand out. The congregation’s singing the last two lines, of the familiar hymn that they sing every Sunday, and she has to be quick, or have more of an audience than she wants.   
“Gwen found me your letters. You’re not taking pity on anyone. You love me too. I know it. Ich werde dich auch immer lieben.”  
He’s startled, she can see, and he’s trying to hide it under the smile. She slips her hand into his once more. She’s vaguely aware that the congregation is taking its seats, and Minister Green is addressing them all, what she’s most aware of is the way in which they’re both smiling, beaming fit to burst, and that his thumb is stroking the inside of her palm, and she loves him.  
They say the right things, in the right places, and from somewhere Ben produces a ring. Gwen nudges her, with a whisper. “Your father’s ring. Dad brought it. Here.” The minister blesses the rings, and she slips a ring on Ben’s finger, and it’s only slightly too big, and Ben slips a ring on hers, and it’s almost exactly right, and the minister says the magic words, and they’re married, and the minister’s inviting him to kiss her. It’s only four hours late, but she’ll take it.   
“I’m going to kiss you now, but try to rein it in, Mrs Baumgartner, we’re in public,” he whispers.  
“I love you,” she whispers back, just for the fun of seeing his pupils widen and his pulse quicken, and as a result the kiss goes a little too long, and it’s not her fault at all. Except that it is, and she’s gone a little wobbly at the knees, remembering that there’s no chaperone tonight.   
There’s applause from the folks in the back, and Jock standing with a wolf whistle, and Margaret holding Josh waves at her and she blows a kiss to the little one, with her free hand. Frau is smiling, and her uncle nods at her, and it takes them a good ten minutes to exit the church, and re-enter the church hall. Only in part because Ben insists that he kiss her properly, to tide her over for tonight. Or at the very least later today. He’s not holding back either, and he’s left no space between the two of them anymore, she can feel every inch of his body against hers, and it’s not enough, and when he pulls his mouth away from hers, her lips are swollen, and her body’s wanting, and they both press their backs up against the cold church bricks, and studiously avoid looking anywhere near the other. She’s keenly aware of every breath she takes, and the rise and fall of her bosom, and the fabric against it.  
He slips his hand into hers. “Leave it any longer and we’ll miss saying hooroo to Gwen and the fellas. Not to mention our own wedding breakfast.”  
She smiles into the sky. “At least I didn’t miss our wedding.”  
He snorts. “Twas a close thing, Bridgid. Left me waiting any longer and I’m not sure what I would have done. C’mon.”  
There’s a buzz of noise, and clinking of tea cups, and a cheer goes up as they walk in. The general consensus in the Darling Downs is that folk should get married, and partner up and settle down the sooner the better, preferably as soon as school’s done, and that war’s a poor excuse for shirking. Jock shakes Ben’s hand, and pronounces it a job well done, and whisks him off to the arms of the McGregors for congratulations. There’s a table weighed down with baked goods, plum cake dripping with syrup, and cinnamon scrolls boosted with cream cheese icing and pretzels flecked with rock salt, and cured meats, which Bridgid knows she had no hand in preparing. Gwen’s being hugged, uncharacteristically tight, by her mother, her head pulled down into her shoulder, like the way in which Margaret is holding Josh. She’s not going to disturb that.  
“Bridgid.” It’s her uncle. He’s holding a plate of cake in one hand, and holding out his hand to her with the other.  
“Uncle.” She takes his hand and shakes it politely.   
“I shortchanged you, I feel. Never let it be said that a Jones man doesn’t pay his debts. I’ve instructed our bank manager to make a transfer.” He claps her on the shoulder. “I’ll speak with you on Sunday, no doubt. I’m away to find my daughter.”  
She watches him go, weaving through the crowd deftly and without a teadrop being spilt. Not an apology, as such, but for money to change hands voluntarily on the initiative of such a tight fisted man, it was good as a pat on the back and a kiss on the cheek.   
There’s an actual kiss on the cheek. Margaret. “I am delighted to have a sister again. And that I no longer need to stand chaperone. A near run thing, I think. Two weeks later and you’d have been, well…” and there’s Josh, playing a game of hide and seek with himself under the trestle tables. “I’d ask if you needed to ask me anything, woman to woman, but I think it’s a little late for that. Don’t you? I’ll tell you this, though. Olive oil is going to be your friend.”  
Bridgid feels the heat start under her shirt, and her neck redden all the way up to her cheeks. “Josh, come and give Aunty Bridge a hello. Your mother’s being cheeky.”  
Josh emerges from the near end of the trestle table, holding a scroll in one hand and a pretzel in the other. He breaks the scroll in half, a little haphazardly, and Bridgid’s glad she’s not cleaning the church hall, but she’s given her first wedding gift, and takes a grateful bite. It’s ridiculously fluffy, and Frau’s certainly exceeded herself on the cinnamon and nuts that threaten to spill onto the floor on the edge of being burnt, dark and bitter and sweet all at once. “Hello. We’ve been up for ages and ages. Did you know? Uncle Ben woke us all up and he was all serious, and he didn’t even laugh when I put my cup of water in his shoe to see if he’d notice. It was a good joke, don’t you think? Mother’s been baking since last week. Oma let me help.”  
“You did a very good job.“ She licks the cream cheese from her fingers, and picks him up. “You are my favourite nephew beyond the shadow of a doubt. May I kiss you?”  
“You may, tante.” He kisses her gravely back, and there’s a bite of a pretzel he bestows on her also. “I’m going to play outside now.”   
“You do that,” she says. She places him down, and he runs off, not looking back, with the remainder of the scroll and the pretzel.   
There’s a wet towel dabbed at her cheek, and two hands on her shoulders, firmly turning her around. “Welcome to the family, liebchen.”  
“Thank you for having me, Frau,” and she half curtseys.   
“No, thank you. I did not have a plan for what we would do with Ben if you would not. Truly. Now. Tomorrow, we shall put our heads together and make plans, but for now, I think it is enough to say thank you. There is a parcel of food so that today it is a holiday. I have also given you some olive oil. Margaret suggested it. Tschüss.” She kisses Bridgid on both cheeks, and smiles, an upgrade from the normal half scowl, and for once, Bridgid is speechless.  
Next is her aunt, wet cheeked, and scrubbing at them with the back of her hands. “I’m happy for you. We’re right next door, if you need anything.”  
“I’m sorry,” says Bridgid.   
“Never you mind sorries.” Her aunt turns, and meets her uncle’s eyes from across the hall. Then to her daughter’s, and she pauses. “Never mind anything at all. Now, do you need to ask me anything? Anything at all?” She’s still looking at her daughter.  
“No,” she barks sharply, and her aunt turns and looks at her, with almost shock in her eyes.   
“No,” she repeats, more quietly. “I appreciate the asking.”   
Her aunt pats her, as if she were to try to pat a wild animal. Goes to say something, and shuts her mouth again. Pats her again, and moves away, in search of her daughter. Across the room, she can see Gwen pick out Jack, and Blinky and Blue, and there’s the door. Ben’s nowhere to be seen, but it transpires that that’s because he’s circled around behind her, and circled his arms around her, and if there wasn’t a train to catch, she’d simply stay there. Her eyes drift shut, momentarily, and she feels the kiss on her hair, the lightest of touches.   
“Train leaves in twenty.”  
She sighs and opens her eyes, and the hall’s half empty. One of the old dears, a McGregor great aunt, smiles indulgently. Bridgid blushes all over again.  
“You’ll need to save your sighs till tonight. God.” His arms tighten briefly about her, and she’s keenly aware of his body, hers.   
“Who said we’re waiting till tonight?” she whispers, half to herself, and only a little bit to him, and she feels as much as hears a stifled groan.  
There’s a pile of presents on the end trestle table, and a picked over platter or two on the next, crumbs, and the room’s empty. Light’s shining in through the windows, and she can hear the people outside, and the magpies warbling. If they don’t go now, they’ll miss the train. She feels his arms release at the moment she thinks of saying it.  
It’s a short walk from the church to the station, and the congregation’s simply relocated. True to their promise, Jack, and Blinky and Blue are a triangle of large bulky soldier around Gwen, shielding her from anyone and everyone. Gwen’s giving permission for individual farewells, and people are extracting last embraces, and promises to write, and Bridgid’s no doubt that she intends to fulfil every last promise. The crowd doesn’t want to part for them, there’s not space given and Ben wedges his way through, with Bridgid holding tight to his waist behind.  
This time, Gwen’s the one to comfort and Bridgid the one to try to hide the fact that her tears are what’s making the other’s shoulder damp. Gwen the one to make promises that they’ll see each other again, and Bridgid the one to say that she shouldn’t make promises that she can’t keep and to send her love to those that love Gwen, and Gwen kisses her on both cheeks, and Bridgid doesn’t flub this one. Jack’s promising to Ben that he’ll stay in touch, and he’ll send a postcard with an address, and Ben promising that they’ll visit, before Bridgid has their first, and Bridgid instead of kicking him, flushing up and her hands twitching. The train’s whistling before they’re ready, and the bedrolls and luggage humped on, and Gwen’s in the window, and waving goodbye. There’s a smile on her face, and the wind’s blowing her hair back, and as she travels away, she’s the most beautiful thing in or out of the Darling Downs.   
The congregation disperses rapidly, with a few final handshakes for Ben, and comments that make Bridgid blush all over again. The station’s empty again, and Bridgid’s uncommonly aware of her body. It seems stupid to still be standing there and not touching him. He exhales as she slips her hand back into his.   
“Buggy?”   
“Yes.”   
They don’t stop to kiss, and Bridgid avoids looking at him all the way there. He’s her husband now. A new person. The buggy that she’s going to climb into with her husband is crammed with boxes, and hampers, and there’s a bedroll, and Bridgid can’t help but laugh. “What would you have done if I hadn’t come? That’s –“.  
“All my worldly goods? Yes. That. I’d have gone home, and been Uncle Ben, and been miserable.” Ben’s half smiling, half not, and she leans in and kisses him, lightly.   
“Come home with me, miserable husband.”   
He lifts her as she’s stepping up the wheel, and she feels like she’s flying. When he mounts the seat next to her, she can feel every inch of his leg next to hers, and there’s no one raising their eyebrows at the lack of space, there’s no one there but them at all. He hums as he clicks the horse on, and the boxes settle behind them, dust in their wake.  
“So I was thinking,” she begins, looking out at the grassy paddocks, up to the turn to the road to her farm. Their farm.  
He cocks his head, but continues humming.  
“It would be a good afternoon to start preparing the top paddock. The plough’s sharp, and we have the horse. Wouldn’t take more than a day or so to do the two paddocks ready for seeding. Shall we unpack the boxes, and eat a bite, and then start?”  
She can see the tips of his ears redden. The humming’s trailed off.  
“Or there’s the cowshed we talked about rebuilding. It’s a good time to do it, the McGregor’s have a young heifer they’ll sell us if we’ve somewhere to put it, at what your mother says is a good price.”   
She chances it, and puts a tentative hand just north of his knee. Squeezes it experimentally, and there’s a jerk of the reins, and the horse quickens. Moves it a mite higher and there’s a jerk on the reins and the horse stops. She takes her hand off completely.  
“See, the thing is, I can’t tell if you’re serious. Or not.” He’s looking at the road, and not at her.  
She puts her hand back, slightly higher again.   
“I’m starting to think not. But, if you are, I can wait just as long as you can.”  
She runs an experimental finger further up his leg. “I’d like to point out that we’re still some ways from home, and the buggy’s full. And the grass is itchy. I’m occupying myself with conversation, and,” she runs her finger back down to his knee and taps it, “teasing you.”  
He lets out a slightly shaky sigh, that’s half a relieved laugh. Flicks the reins, and the horse, twitching its ears and tail, plods on again. “Is that so.”  
“It is.” She chuckles, well pleased with herself. “I’ve had no less than three people, mark you three, expound upon the virtues of olive oil. I think my aunt would have explained the mechanics of it all with reference to livestock, again, had we not been in the church hall. I’d half a mind to tell them all that I’d likely seen more specimens of male manhood than they could possibly imagine, although in such a state so as to remove any desire to see them at a closer range, if you take my meaning.”  
Ben stares at the road to come. “Unfortunately, I do. Let me provide you with reassurance on that point, at least. I was the one that held people’s clothing and belongings outside, and tried not to listen. I can tell you that Charles sounds like a dying cow. And I should not have said that. I likely sound worse. I can imagine the comparison’s you’re going to draw later. A hiccupping frog. A chirruping finch. It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”  
She squeezes his knee. “Awful. So terrible that you’ll have to do it over and again until you make a proper sound. Do you think you can manage that? Do you?”  
“And I’ve not even touched on what a relief it’s going to be, not having to fend you off anymore. Look at you, not even down our lane yet,” and she squeezes his thigh again, and he yelps, as he turns the corner into the lane, “and your hand, good lord, is in a place no unmarried hand should be. Good thing you married me, isn’t it? Oh my lord,” he says, as her hand travels up further, and then stops talking altogether.  
The horse clops on, down and into the barn that they’ve shored up again, and they sit a minute as Ben breathes heavy, and Bridgid stifles a giggle.   
“I’ll tell you what, being married to you is not going to be dull. I suggest this. You start unloading the buggy, and I will deal with Father Joseph, the horse. Water, oats, perhaps a brush down, whatever helps me regain my composure, or I can tell you, disappointed is what you’re going to be. When the buggy’s unloaded, you and me and the olive oil. Yes?”  
She has half the buggy unladen in record time, the food stowed in the larder, and they’ll be eating stale plumcake for days, if the ants don’t find it. The sausage has fennel, and pepper, and the pretzels are as good as any she’s stolen from Frau as a child. The plumcake leaves smears of jam on her hands, which she licks off, not wanting to waste, the jam at the edge of caramel and burnt, and sweet and bitter, and wonders how much longer it can take to deal with a horse.   
Ben has only two bags, and she’s not sure what to do with them, so she stows them in the spare. There’s the army bedroll, and that goes on the spare bed too, and she finds herself done. The bedspread’s wrinkled, and she smooths it out. Looking out the window, there’s stillness in the trees, and there’s no sound of company. She hangs the blue dress back on the rack, smoothing it down neatly, and slips the workclothes back on, buttoned up neatly to the top. Replaits her hair, one straight brown plait down her back. Yet still alone. She goes to investigate.   
He’s out in the barn still, talking to the horse, now unfastened, and head in the trough, paying no mind to what Ben’s saying, and it doesn’t seem to be a very coherent speech at that, she’s not surprised, if she were the horse, she’d be ignoring him too. His hand’s travelling rhythmically down the horse’s neck, stroking it down over and over, white against the brown, until she traps it in hers.   
“You’re in your best clothes, and you’re rubbing down a horse,” she observes.   
“I should change?” He continues to pat it down, over and over.  
“You should. Unless you think Father Joseph merits a suit.”  
“I was thinking about Wilhelm. When they were married, he was so happy. Do you remember?”  
She nods, although he’s still looking at the horse.  
“And all throughout the war, until the end, he would talk to me about his plan for their future. He was going to teach Josh to ride, just like us. To shoot a mark from 200 feet. To taste the soil and know what to plant. How to knot a tie, to knead bread. And he would speak of Margaret, not anything improper, although the others begged for it, but how he longed to be at home, sitting on the verandah and feeling her head on his shoulder. The smell of her hair. The way in which she hums to herself when she’s walking about. Looking forward to being home, and all of that he’ll never have, and here I am, with you, and,” he gulps the sentence into silence.  
She wraps her arms about his waist, and squeezes. He smells of horse, and sweat, and salt, and he’s still silent. Pats the horse one last time, and wipes the back of his palm across his cheek. He sets his shoulders, and turns in the circle of her arms.  
“Fate worse than death.” He tries to smile, and it dies on his face. “I find myself more nervous than before a dawn expedition. And why is that, I have no idea.”  
She releases her arms, slowly, and she can feel her stomach knotting, takes a half step back. There’s a swallow darting about the eaves, chirruping. “Could it be that you had no sleep to speak of last night? Did you eat anything at all for breakfast? Come inside. Your mother’s sent enough food for days. Then you can sleep and I won’t bother you at all. Not even to tease.”  
He’s watching her mouth now, and she wonders absently whether there’s jam on her cheek, and licks at her lips to see. There is. Then yelps as he picks her up in his arms, and she throws her arms around at his neck for balance, as he strides out of the barn, her legs barely clearing the buggy wheel, he’s half smirking now, when she cranes her head up to see.   
“I’m counting on you teasing. Looking forward to it.” He nudges the door open with his foot, and they’re in the house, and down the hall, and in the little room and the creaky bed does indeed creak when they tumble down on it, and she’s not afraid anymore. Not even when he finishes undoing all her buttons, and his, and pulls the white sheet above them both, glowing in the sun.   
He invites her to catalogue the many things about which she can poke fun about his body, and she instead traces the scars on his shoulder, and the smaller ones on his back, and his arms, and even one large cut on his thigh, and wonders at whether the incidents that gave rise to them are described in the letters she hasn’t read. She’s no scars to show him, but he traces over her body nevertheless, like he’s checking she’s no phantasm, no dream. She squirms down, and inspects him, closely, and pronounces him free of the pox, and he laughs, but his head slams back hard into the pillow when she traces his length with her tongue, just to see what would happen, and insists he repay the favour, and she doesn’t laugh at all when he does, all shudders and sighs herself, and when he all too soon stops, licking his way back up her body, there’s no need for olive oil, and neither of them laughs when he slowly finds his way inside her, not until he’s all the way in, arms braced about her and he rests his forehead on hers and closes his eyes. Just for a minute, he says, and she’s so stretched, and so full, that she can’t believe he’s stopping, and then she laughs.   
“I’ll have you know,” he says, in as even tenor as he can muster and a half eye open, “that you’re not doing anything for my ego right now.”   
She can feel him deep inside her, every inch of his pulse beat, and her hands full of sweaty back, and buttocks.   
“Just, last night. You were right.” She experiments with a shift of her hips, and he bites down on her shoulder. He chuckles into it when she whimpers, and starts to move again, and then she stops thinking.  
Afterwards, when they’re both sticky with sweat, and he’s fallen asleep, all long limbs and brown curls, and she’s not far off herself, all drowsy and tingles from her head to her toes, she decides that they can, in fact, take the rest of the day for themselves, and that the ploughing can wait until Sunday. Or possibly Monday.


	54. 6 December 1919, Gwen Jones’ diary, England

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Gwen is as happy as she deserves to be

I am certainly almost the happiest person alive. We have plans for Christmas, oranges, and stockings, and knitted caps for each other. Clem does not mind at all that I have a scar on my arm, she kisses it in the morning, when we wake, and I no longer remember the fear that I felt that night, with the bullets and the drunkard who wanted to be my husband. Husband! I laugh to think about how foolish I was, now that I am here and she has forgiven me. Imagine if I had not awakened. If I had worse friends, who persuaded me to listen to his entreaties, or if I had allowed my father to guide me, for the sake of his farm, and a few more acres of land. I would not have had all this, a feather bed and a Clementine to put in it. We have been blessed with the little cottage on her parent’s estate, and I know that it is unfair when so many have so little, to be living in such relative luxury, but I cannot find it in my heart to give it up, when I see how happy she is to potter around with me. She has not regained her memories of those last moments of the war, and I do not know if she ever will, but she remembers who I am, and that she loves me, although she does not recall all of the why, and that’s enough. She looks at me sometimes like she wants to devour me entirely, and others as if she wants to wrap me in cotton wool and shield me from the world, and that is exactly as it should be. I am home.


	55. 31 December 1919, Bendigo and home again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything ends and begins again.  
> Thank you for reading. This has been quite the journey, and I am better educated for it.

The letter says the same thing that it did the first three times he read it, that his brother’s skipped town, and his father has been holed up in the big house for weeks without accepting visitors and that Ben thinks it would be wise to return. That his father’s asked for him to come home.  
He’s still not certain what to make of it. Blinky and Blue have a bachelor’s home of their own now, horses too, and they ride out as a threesome in the morning, round the property, tend to the cows, and it’s a very different landscape that he rides through than at home. Trees, and rolling hills, with sharp creases in them down which cows and sheep can and do get themselves lost. Limestone with holes to trap a horse’s leg, although Blue shows him a gold nugget of no small size that washed up from the creek that likely causes it. The clouds drift and sit as mist on the hills all day, when they’ve a mind to, that is, when they’re not burnt off by the blazing sun. It’s all very different to the endless plains, and the sheep like clouds that only occasionally transform into behemoths of thunder and demigods of lightning. It’s a place where he can feel he’s not quite part of things. The folk are welcoming enough, and he sleeps well in bed, enough to ignore any goings on he doesn’t want to explicitly acknowledge, and he has a place in the fabric.  
It’s just, it’s not home.  
This time, when he leaves the train at Jimbour station, he’s on his own. He hasn’t told anyone he’s coming, not even Ben, he’s never liked writing letters, and no one’s coming with him. Although Blue’s pressed him to come back if things do not end well.   
That means he can sit on the station bench, and simply watch the clouds traverse the sky. There’s a eagle circling high in the sky. Magpies warbling in the tree, the sound that makes him wish for rain, although these clouds won’t deliver. There’s a small flock of galahs nibbling seed in the grass edges of the dirt road, undisturbed by the passing of the train, and there’s grass enough that they won’t be done for a while.   
The walk from the station’s not changed, although the fields have, he notes, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The Baumgartner’s have planted out sorghum, and it’s on its way towards full growth, and he can see the old Jones’ field planted out with sunflowers, blooming giant heads turned towards the sun. The handful of earth he grasps smells right, rich and dark. He’ll visit Ben and Bridgid later. Now’s for him.  
The gravel crunches under his feet, but there’s no other sound. The hedges stand tall, but unkempt, they’ve grown how they liked without guidance, and the shapes are blurry on the edges, although the essentials remain. The house is still white, but it’s seen some dust in the last three months, and as he draws nearer, he sees broken windows on the receiving room, and bullet holes about the door. The door’s unlocked when he pushes it, and opens to a scene of chaos and debris, chairs upturned and tables broken, vases smashed and left in shards on the floor. The bannisters of the staircase, that he remembers once sliding down over and over for a glorious day before he was stopped, have been staved in, like a broken rib. There’s a layer of dust over everything, and it smells musty and dank.   
His father’s in the courtyard, sitting in a white cane chair, unshaven, and there’s the remains of a piece of bread next to him, a mug of tea on the other side, and the flies are buzzing around it. There’s no sign of Charles, nor of anyone else.   
His father looks up, and his eyes are unfocussed. “Is it you, Charles? No. Jack. How are you here? Are you here?”  
He places a gentle hand on his father’s arm. “I’m home.”


End file.
